Operation Manual

Developing Sites and Pages | 31
Understanding site structure and navigation
Unlike a printed publication, a Web site doesn’t depend on a linear page
sequence. When designing a site, it makes more sense to think of the site in
spatial terms, with a structure like that of a museum which people will
explore. You can generally assume that your visitors will come in through the
"front door" (the Home page)—but where they go after that depends on the
links you’ve provided. These navigation pathways are like corridors that
connect the various rooms of the museum. It’s up to you as the "architect" to
develop a sensible arrangement of pages and links so that visitors can find
their way around easily, without getting lost.
In WebPlus, you can use the Site Structure tree to visually map out the
structure of your site and then add navigation elements—special theme
graphics that dynamically adapt to the structure you’ve defined. You’ll
encounter the Site Structure tree frequently as you learn about working with
pages.
Site structure
Unlike the museum in our analogy, the "structure" of a Web site has nothing
to do with its physical layout, or where pages are stored. Rather, it’s a way of
logically arranging the content on the site so that visitors have an easier time
navigating through it. One of the most useful organizing principles—which
WebPlus strongly reinforces—is an "inverted tree" structure which can branch
out to other pages. To the visitor navigating your site, this arrangement
presents your content in a familiar, hierarchical way, structured into sections
and levels.
A section is a content category, for example "Who’s Who?," "Products," or
"Links." The various major sections are typically listed on the site’s Home
page in a navigation bar. Ideally, each page on the site belongs to a particular
section. And unless there’s only one page in a given section, the section will
have its own main page, which usually serves as a menu for subsidiary pages.
The level is the number of steps (i.e. jumps) a given page is removed from the
Home page. The Home page will always reside at Level 1, normally along
with main section menu pages. This allows navigation bars to work easily and
automatically. Pages one step "below" the section menu pages reside at Level
2, and so on.