web site structure/architecture

Question

What web site structure(s)/architecture(s) would the community swear by, with a narrowing down in the direction towards more of a small facebook style project?

I understand the question to be rather broad/subjective; but being relatively new to the area of web development, I find just looking at and learning from examples of working projects most times extremely helpful, and that at other times just blows my mind and changes how I construct future assignments.

With the latter paragraph in mind, does the community have any suggestions on places to look/articles to read?

Answer 1

Possibly a bit heavy for your immediate needs, but have you seen the Polar bear*? Well worth a browse in the library to see if it's what you require.

*Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Answer 2

I guess it depends on the technology you select. For web projects in general I've always employed (Web-)MVC for the past two years or so. The advantage being a clear seperation of frontend and backend in order to create a managable code base.

But that's as vague as a recommendation could be. :)

Aside from using a framework to build your site from scratch, you might also want to look into using what's already out there (in terms of open source). I'd recommend any kind of "community software" that's semi-established, well documented, not too often in the news because of security issues and offers API to extend its base. That could indeed jump start you on your facebook-esque site. ;)

Answer 3

Thanks, IainMH, Till. I'm without a formal computer science qualification and find large blanks in my knowledge. Over the past couple of years I've gone surprisingly far, though knowing the underlining foundation of projects I've created pollute their efficiency and success.

Being a bit of a perfectionist doesn't help (what programmer isn't?) the headaches I get from looking at badly formed projects, that only to my knowing are badly formed only after stepping back and looking at how they're structured. I guess it's a chicken and egg thing, but also a planning thing.

Anyhow, what has helped is studying existing projects.