Question

I’m trying to organize a larger PHP project with more than 50 files in code, not counting the resource files.

It looks like this:

• administrator files (php code and resource files)
• database framework
• resource files (images, templates, including PHP templates, CSS)
• CSS files
• scripts (Javascript and jQuery)
• PHP code (classes, controls)
• PHP and HTML scripts (acting as pages, placed in root)

How does one, properly organize a larger PHP project like this one?

Answer 1

First of all, a project that holds 50 files is not even called a project, in the real concept of the word.

Take a look at how the most used frameworks do that and you will get a place to start.

Some PHP frameworks:

• Kohana
• Zend
• Symfony

So you can have a good reference, there is a simple good practice on PHP projects that tells that only the template, stylesheet and scripts files should be in a public directory, such as /var/www on your host. All the core application should be on a higher-level structure, for example:

src/ (The core application)
public/ (The public directory)
    css/
    img/
    js/
    index.php

You can, then, have a .htaccess file on the public directory as well, so you can control the requests.

But again, project architecture and structure organization goes a lot further than those simple tips.