Image Directory Control

image directory, images folder, thumbnails, large images, medium images

[jcnh74]

Hello Webmaster World! First time poster, long time user.
I would like to start a discussion on the matter of increasing image directories. I administer an ecommerce site where new images are added daily. It's setup as follows.

/images/
/images/buttons
/images/largeimages
/images/medimages
/images/thumbnails
/images/xlimages

I have to say that that /images/ itself has gotten out of hand because I've come up with other type of images that don't fit into the latter categories but still need a home. For example; screenshots, manufacturer logos, design objects and god knows what else.
There are about 4500 images all together. My question to all is. Is there a right way to do this that’s SEO friendly, load friendly and user (webmaster) friendly? If so what experiences have some of you had with growing site structures and file organization?

[milanmk]

Instead of making sub directories based on category name why dont you put all the images into one directory and name them according to the category they belong. This way it will also be SEO friendly.

buttons-1.jpg
buttons-2.jpg
screenshots-1.jpg
screenshots-2.jpg

[Clinton Labombard]

He has 4500 images. Have you ever seen a directory listing of 4500 images? Try navigating through a tenth of that and see if you don't think about splitting them up.

jcnh74,
Keep the directories logical and keep the names different enough to keep you and others from getting confused. Make sure the search engines can find the images is the only other thing I can suggest. That is, if that's what you want.

[milanmk]

Keep the directories logical

As he said, jcnh74 already have that setup.

I was just thinking of some other options and so i suggested to put all the images into one directory. But as you said its difficult to navigate then he can split it to couple of directories and have the filenames as mentioned above.

[jomaxx]

IMO there are no SEO significant implications except with respect to the names of the image files themselves, and I don't see why there would be load (server load?) implications.

Just find a directory structure that makes logical sense for the way you intuitively work, so that you (and others) can easily find images when you want them. It will probably be a huge PITA and maybe not worth the effort to redo your existing classification, but in the future I would think thematically rather than just by size.

[physics]

Having too many files in one directory can also slow things down because it can take longer for the file to be found by the OS (depending on the type of file system you're using). For good SEO you can figure out all the different categories that the images belong to based on keywords that are relevant to your site ... then put them in there. Or if that's too much trouble and you're not that worried about SEO you can make directories based on what letter/number the image names start with, i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, ... A, B, C ... that will keep any one directory from getting too big (for a while ;).

[physics]

Oh, by the way, Welcome to WebmasterWorld.com!

[jcnh74]

Thanks. This was very helpful.
I do use a logical naming convention when it comes to the images themselves. This was only implemented after I took over the site in 2003. So all previous images are stilled named poorly.
ei.
man45lrs.jpg
now
manufacturer-product-name-some-relevant-keywords.jpg
I'm convinced it's help so much with our rankings.
Thanks Again!