I believe that organization starts in UNIX. If your system is not well organized or you have not followed a consistent method, you may want to consider why this is a good idea. Many new administrators take simple organizational methodologies, such as the location of added software, for granted. A few months later the result is that changes, such as upgrades, require additional time to install and troubleshoot. In the end, you may save a considerable amount of time by doing three very simple things:

In 1994, an incredibly forward-thinking man named Rasmus Lerdorf developed a set of tools that used a parsing engine to interpret a few macros here and there. They were not extravagant: a guest book, a counter, and some other "home page" elements that were cool when the Web was in its infancy. He eventually combined these tools with a form interpretation (FI) package he had written, added some database support, and released what was known as PHP/FI.Then, in the spirit of Open Source software development, developers all over the world began contributing to PHP/FI. By 1997, more than 50,000 Web sites were using PHP/FI to accomplish different tasks— connecting to a database, displaying dynamic content, and so on.

Before you build your Web site, you may want to consider its organization. While more than likely you have thought of many ways of organizing your Web site’s structure, you have probably thought about it from a navigational perspective. In addition to thinking about it from that angle, I would suggest that you also think about your Web site’s structure from a maintenance point of view. What can you do to make your Web site easier to maintain? What conventions will simplify the structure of your pages?

The result of this early structuring process will help you set a standard to guide your efforts. Now that you have your server up and running, it would be a good opportunity to consider a few of the issues involved. By no means, is this the only approach that you can use. Any thought-out logical system should serve you equally well. Many of the ideas presented here are used at accessLINK, inc., a small Web presence provider where I spend many hours of my day. AccessLINK develops several small- to medium-sized Web sites per week and maintains a few more on a daily basis. This article presents some of the ideas that I use for organizing our work. I will also address some other services, such as automatic support for personal Web pages, that your users will want you to implement.

In 2001, Safeware(http://www.safeware.com) estimated that thieves stole over 500,000 laptops for that year but only 15,000 desktop computers. Laptops make the most obvious and enticing targets because of their small size, light weight, and high resale value, so if you’re traveling with a laptop in public, do your best to hide it. Walk through any airport and you’ll see many people carrying their laptops in distinctive black carrying cases, easily recognizable to a thief and nearly impossible to identify by sight if stolen. Instead of carrying your laptop in a case that screams out "Laptop! Steal me!" put it in an ordinary briefcase or backpack, or even in a paper shopping bag to disguise it as a souvenir from an overpriced airport gift shop.