Best practices for organizing assets
When organizing your assets, the top priority is to follow the standards set by your organization, as this makes it easier for you and other editors to find already uploaded assets. Following a standard lets editors search for assets instead of having to browse for them. Make sure your standards are documented so that editors can access them.
If you can set your own standards, here are some tips on organizing your assets. Do the best you can from the start, with input from others as needed. But remember that you can modify how blocks and media files are organized in the future should the need arise. It will not be done without effort, but perhaps with less pain than you anticipate.
Where to store your assets?
The folder structure must be simple and intuitive for editors to find what they want.
Remember that the same structure is used for blocks and media assets, so if you create a folder under Blocks, the same folder is automatically added under Media; see Folders.
The order of folders and the content in the folders in the assets pane is determined by their names. See How to name folders and assets? below for tips on naming folders and assets.
Global or local folder
You can store assets in three containers, each containing any number of folders. These containers are called For All Sites, For This Site, and For This Page (For This Block, if you are on a block and not a page). Read more about these containers in the Folders topic.
- Store your assets in a global folder (that is, For All Sites or For This Site) if they should be available for use in multiple places. Logos, icons, and teaser blocks are often used in several places and so are often stored in global folders.
- Store assets in a local folder (For This Page or For This Block) if they should only be used in one place. Images related to news, campaigns, events, and so on are often just used once and can be stored in a local folder.
Access rights
The folder structure should be set up so you can control who can create, update, and delete assets. Access rights can be set on the folder structure and specific users or user groups. But it is also possible for developers or admins to limit the types of blocks or assets editors can create and which block types can be added to which page types.
Uploaded assets can be automatically published or required to be reviewed and published separately from the upload process.
How to name folders and assets?
These naming guidelines apply to folder names and names of individual assets, such as block names.
Use folder and asset names that clearly describe their content, such as AlloyMeet_women_spring_campaign_2020.jpg. An image name such as img_12345678_a.jpg is not helpful for other editors.
Start off with general area folders and add sub-folders with increasing levels of detail, for example, Products/Alloy Fashion/Campaigns/Womens/2-for-1/teaser_images.
Sort folders and assets
Folders and assets are sorted in this order in the assets pane:
- Names starting with an underscore
- Numerically
- Alphabetically
This means that the folder _TeaserImages is sorted first, followed by folders 1_Logos, 2_Images, Images, and last Logos.
Knowing how the folders are sorted helps you to organize assets in a folder structure based on folder names.
Group assets in folders
The grouping of assets in folders can follow different principles or a combination of these principles. You have to determine what is best suited for your type of website, organization, and so on. Here are some examples:
- Group folders by page tree structure – If your page tree structure is based on the top-level pages for Product A, Product B, Events and Contact us, mimic that structure in the assets panel.
- Group folders by usage – Another way of creating a structure for assets is by grouping them by their type of usage, for example, folders for Campaigns, Banners, Buttons, and News.
- Group folders by brand or product area – Group assets to folders by product areas, such as Clothing, Shoes or even product name levels for scarves, ties, hats, and so on. If you run an Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) solution with multiple sites and want to reuse assets between the sites, create brand folders under For All Sites.
- Grouping folders by language – You might prefer distinguishing assets by language to keep track of them, especially if you run culture-specific campaigns with images. In this case, create an EN folder for all English campaign images, an FR folder for French assets, and so on.
- Grouping folders by access rights – If several editors are working with the content on the website, you might only have access rights to specific parts of the page tree. You would want to have your own folders in the assets panel as well.
Keep it clean
Organizing things is not only about adding things; it is also about keeping things up-to-date and removing things that are not used. Keep your assets fresh by having a routine for deleting or archiving unused assets.