Generating a Visual Site Map of an Existing Site

Question

I thought I could easily answer this question by searching the web, but my Google-fu has failed me. So I turn to you, oh mighty stackoverflowers, and beseech you for enlightenment:

What is the quickest and best way to generate a visual site map (e.g. flowchart, mind map, IA diagram) of an existing website?

Additional context: my client has been asked by their client to redesign their website. The art directors understandably asked for information on the current site architecture, to which the client had nothing(!). So they have asked me to automagically produce a visual site map by somehow crawling the client's site.

I have found various free/shareware apps that do this, but have been unable to find reviews or best practices. I'd prefer to make a robust recommendation rather than grab the first shareware app that seems to do the trick. So, how would you recommend generating a visual site map?

Much appreciated!

Answer 1

It's not free, but Visio has a web site map diagram type that will go spider a site and generate a nice pretty diagram of the results.

Answer 2

http://htmleditors.shadowboxcreative.ca/2007/12/13/sitemap-diagrams-using-omnigraffle-applescript-and-a-google-sitemap/

Answer 3

Hey gang,

update time. Both Visio & OmniGraffle w/ sitemap are good solutions. In the end, the client found that those applications by themselves produced too much granular information to be useful. For example, if a site has 30 product pages, each with their own overview, specifications, and documents sections the tree gets very big indeed. I solved for this by taking the sitemap and scrubbing it in Excel first to eliminate redundancies, and then generating the sitemap. A bit time-consuming but worth it in the end.

Thanks!

Answer 4

try concept draw pro and add the web plugins. great tool.