Duplicated freesite file structure

[nottslad]

Interesting thread and, as a relative newbie, something I have been pondering myself.

I tend to make 5 mirror sites per site while I see which sites generally link me and which don't in order to work out my optimum submission list. After a little more trial and error I'll probably whittle this down to maybe 2 or 3 mirrors per site.

This is my old way:

www.domain.com/sitename/ (this dir contains separate folders with both thumbnail and full images plus index.html, main.htm, gallery1.htm and gallery2.htm) so is the usual free site structure.

The first mirror I make a new directory called:
www.domain.com/sitename1/ (this contains only index.html but the index.html calls main.htm from the first directory)

The second mirror I make a new directory called:
www.domain.com/sitename2/ (this again contains only an index.html which again calls main.htm from the first directory)

This way has the advantage of only having to upload one new html file for each mirror. I found using this method that at the vast majority of linklists I submit to it got me accepted (or, if I was rejected it was for other reasons).

There were a couple of sites who did reject me because of this and I am sure Fonz wont mind me saying that Smiling Pussy was one site that rejected me because of this (I dont know if this is a new rule, or if I escaped previously as my first few sites using that structure were accpeted). His advice was to "keep all html files in the same directory".

Noting that the advice does not mention about keeping image files in the same directory I now use this directory structure:

www.domain.com/sitename/ (this dir contains seperate folder with both thumbnail and full images plus index.html, main.htm, gallery1.htm and gallery2.htm) so is the same as the one above and a full free site in itself.

The first mirror I make a new directory called:
www.domain.com/sitename1/ (this contains index.html, main.htm, gallery1.htm and gallery2.htm but calls images from the sitename directory above)

The second mirror I make a new directory called:
www.domain.com/sitename2/ (again this contains index.html, main.htm, gallery1.htm and gallery2.htm but again calls images from the sitename directory above)

Of course you have to upload 3 more files per mirror but since the main.htm and gallery.htm pages are light, like 6 or 7KB, they take up next to no diskspace. The images, that would have a significant effect on diskspace if uploaded multiple times, only have to be uploded once.

I'm not saying this file structure is the correct way just a way that has not led to me experiencing any rejections for directory structure since I started using it.

I would appreciate any feedback on this from link list owners and perhaps also someone could tell me why the first method is frowned upon by some - I can't see the harm in it myself.

Also can someone explain what is a 'dup penalty' that Halfdeck referred to above?

Hope that helps