Operation Manual

30 Web Site Design and Construction
♦ A section is a content category, like “Company News,”
“Products,” “People,” or “Links.” The various major sections are
typically listed on the site’s Home page. 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 gateway to 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, while sectional main pages are typically Level 2. Pages
one step “below” that are Level 3. We could diagram a typical site
like this:
The illustration at the right shows how a similar structure might appear
in the Site Structure tree on the
Studio’s Site tab. The tree provides a
visual aid that lets you organize the
content on your site into sections
and levels—in other words as a
hierarchy of parent pages branching
to child pages.
Using the tree, it’s easy to visualize
relationships between pages and lay
out your site in a way that makes
sense for the content you have to
offer. Of course, a Web site is a truly
an interconnected web of pages, and
the tree structure don’t prevent you
from installing links between any
two pages. But it does expose the
major pathways within your site—
up, down, and sideways. Logical
section/level design makes your site
easier to navigate, and WebPlus