The folder hierarchy and file naming convention totally escapes me - i realize there is a great deal of abstraction but what would help me immensely to get familiar with the site
is to get to know from the back end what each and every file's purpose.

I would like to see a something more than a terse phrase for each file in every folder of the hierarchy ( images are obvious )

FOLDER - general description & purpose
-- FILENAME - general description & purpose
-- FILENAME - general description & purpose
-- FOLDER - general description & purpose
--- FILENAME - general description & purpose

Or even if at all possible an excell spread sheet of the exploded hierarchy ( also include the preferred permissions on files and folders numerical and long form permission notation IE: ( 777 and drwxrwxrwx )

Yeah I think I would also be pretty interested in this. As an ex VB user and currently learning PHP things like this may spur on your mod community ;)

Not sure why this is in this forum, but I have often thought that it would be great if there was a small readme file in every folder that specifies what its for and the recommended permissions.

For modders, there is this. http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/official.html?record=156