Pyramid Scheme
November 30, 1998
Most sites use a hierarchical arrangement. In other words,
users can "drill down" to greater and greater levels of detail.
A hierarchy may be thought of as a triangle, with the home page
at the top corner, and the lowest level of detail as the
bottom edge of the triangle. Hierarchies only make sense
when they are reasonably close to an equilateral (equal-sided)
triangle. If your home page links to twenty pages, you should
add another level. If your home page links to only two pages,
each of which links to only two pages, etc., then you have too
many levels. Smaller sites usually need only two levels, while
medium-sized sites may have a secondary level of "hub" pages
between the home page and the lower level containing the actual
content. Of course, some sections of your site may have more
levels than others.
How long should each page be? This is partly a matter of
opinion, and varies greatly from one site to another. Some
people believe that lengthy content, which if placed on a
single page would require readers to scroll down several
screens to see it all, should be broken up into several pages.
Others argue that it's less hassle to scroll down a lengthy page
than it is to click through to another page and wait for it to
load. Sites designed for geeks (programming and network stuff)
almost always seem to go for the long-page model, while more
"consumer-oriented" sites more often choose the lots-of-short-pages
design. Some online magazines, or "content-based" sites, do this
for financial reasons. They sell ads based on the number of page
impressions delivered, so breaking an article up into five pages
means that they will score five page impressions instead of one
(assuming that the article holds the reader's interest). It may
also improve search engine findability, and make articles easier
to maintain. The author prefers to avoid breaking content up into
too many pages. There's nothing wrong with a page that scrolls
down for miles, as long as it's designed properly.
A long page should have a table of contents at the top, with
hyperlinks
to each section of the page. This is done by inserting
NAME hyperlink tags at appropriate points, and using the "#"
to link to the different sections, for example:
A HREF = "long_page.html#section1"
A HREF = "long_page.html#section2"
etc. You may also wish to include a "Top of Page" link here and there.
The Foyer
Nav 101
Navbars are Nifty (and Necessary)
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