How do you create an effective web site map?

Question

Hi. We've got a non-profit site that's been up for over 10 years; though it's gone through various redesigns, it's showing its age and needs to be revamped -- inside and out. This includes the layout of the pages as well as the internal structure of the site.

As part of rebuilding the site and designing it structure, we'd like to create a site map that's effective and efficient. In other words, we want to be able to follow best practices for building a site. The site will ultimately reside in a Magnolia CMS, and so we need to know what pages are top-level, what are secondary, etc., while also ensuring that we provide the fastest/most intuitive route to our content.

We have literally thousands of static pages that were created using Dreamweaver templates; many of these pages are "dead" -- nothing points to them anymore. The current site was designed and built piecemeal: A hundred different people put in requests for links and other items to appear on the home page, so there's no coherent vision -- more a collection of links anywhere and everywhere, along with various modules that were added over the years anywhere the developer could fit them.

We'd like to start fresh -- leave the past behind, design the site with brand new links and structure to effectively meet our users' needs. This is in an organization where people hate and fear change, rather than embrace it even if it helps them. Any advice or recommendations you have will be much appreciated as we undertake this process. Thanks.

Answer 1

Semantically-speaking, it should be built using nested lists:

<ul>
   <li>Level One
       <ul>
           <li>Level Two</li>
       </ul>
   </li>
</ul>

• Level One
  • Level Two

Answer 2

Magnolia will create google sitemaps for you

http://www.magnolia-cms.com/home/magnolia-cms/evaluation/features.html

Go to the second instance of sitemap on the page

Answer 3

First bit of advice, take your time! Sounds like you have quite a large project ahead of you, and it definitely takes a lot of time to do it right. You'll need to do some research to find out what exactly your users are looking for from your site, and how you will provide it to them. Analyze your current traffic to see what is most popular, and reach out to some of your customers to see what they feel is missing.

You'll need to organize everything your site will have into a small set of sections, which will be your main areas of the site. Then you can break those down further from there. You don't want to go too deep so everything is accessible within a few clicks. But you don't want to have 20 links on your homepage either. Get some input from users outside your business to tell you what is important to them and what should be most accessible. It's hard sometimes to view your company from the outside looking in. You may be well off hiring a consultant to at least help you get started to give you a fresh perspective.

And finally, I will say you won't please everybody so don't even try. Get input from the various departments in your company that need a web presence, but then once you decide how to lay it out, that's it, don't go back to them to make sure it's ok. I know this isn't always possible depending who has how much pull in the company, but if you can get away with it, it will save you many headaches in the long run. Sorry to ramble on, I recently went through a similar situation at my current company and it is definitely a huge undertaking. Good luck!