Datasheet

Figure 1-5: A site map for WebMag 5000, our imaginary Web site
But the boundaries aren’t (and shouldn’t be) as distinct as they might seem. Presumably, there will be
content on the home page that will feature articles and other internal content. Because of this, it’s also
likely that there will be some facility on that front page allowing users to move directly into an individ-
ual article, two levels down in the navigation. Should our site map reflect this? If so, how should it?
In all honesty, it’s your decision as to how exhaustively your site map charts the relationships between
different sections of the site. If we were to graph every point in which users could move between each
area, our site map might start to look like a map of downtown London, riddled with arrows and lines
and making very little sense. Rather, we can outline some of the more important relationships between
the different sections. For example, let’s say that every article, tutorial, and review published on our site
features a link to the author’s profile page in the About section. Conversely, each author’s profile will
contain links to any articles, tutorials, and reviews that he or she has published on our site. If our site
map needed to reflect this relationship, we might update the document to look like Figure 1-6.
This kind of cross-linking helps promote deeper relationships between different sections of your site,
which allow users more than one way to access the information they’re looking for. A user might come
to your site looking for information on a particular piece of software, and could happen upon additional
work by the author on his or her profile page. By creating relationships across the different content cate-
gories, we create a richer interface for our users, as well as a more scalable foundation for any future
content we add to our site.
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The Planning and Development of Your Site
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