35 replies to this topic

[garyhall]

I emailed Mel privately and thought I might just add this to the discussion. Mel go ahead and answer here if you read this.

I have been looking for a program that we can use to automatically generate a "site map". I have found a few, but I have no idea if there are good to use or not. I used Haystack's suggestion and went looking for examples. Then that led me to look for a product that will not only create a site map on the fly, but one that could be altered. In other words, if I don't want an alphabetical one I could choose to have the site arraigned in a category fashion or something.

I was wondering if you guys out there have some favorite product you like to use. Free is always a good price, but not a criteria for us. We need something that will give us some flexibility in the appearance design.

Our E-commerce site will have a minimum of 1,000 pages and will change regularly.

Thanks.

Warm regards,

Gary

[mcanerin]

I've been redesigning a site and had cause to take a close look at the site map and how to handle large sites.

Naturally, the reasonable person would simple replace the site map with a search engine. Of course, being reasonable is never good enough for me so I had to go think about how to make my life hard again

I'm experimenting with "nested site maps" now. I think I just made that up - at least I haven't seen it before. Think about the Yahoo directory. Can you imagine what would happen if they put all their sections on the front page? Ouch. Instead, they organise it into departments and then provide listings and further catagories for each one. eBay, same thing.

I'm creating a site map that contains the top requested pages (easy from the logs) followed by a basic site map that will get the visitor into an area related to their search. Then they will get another site map that is now applicable to what they need. Basically a directory style sitemap.

I'll let you know if I run into useability issues, but I think it will work.

Ian

[compar]

Ian,

I have seen site maps that look exactly like Windows Explore hard drive directory listing. Isn't that a nested, drill down type of structure? I don't see any reason this strcture wouldn't work.

[mcanerin]

That's a good idea too! I'll think on it. You are right, and it would be intuitive (for windows users, anyway)

I think the difference between a nested site map and those huge pop out nav menus is that by nesting you can deal with way more pages and catagories. And I hate the pop out ones. You have to hover you mouse and thendrag down and hover again, and then drag over and ... well by that time I've usually jiggled the mouse too much and the menu disappears. Then I go to a different site.

The nesting would be SE friendly too, as opposed to the java / DHTML menus.

I'll post a link when I have something for comments and review. Hopefully it will help people with huge or dynamically generated sites.

Ian

[garyhall]

I'll post a link when I have something for comments and review. Hopefully it will help people with huge or dynamically generated sites.

Thanks guys. I really need some help here.

Regards,

gary

[mcanerin]

We've continued this thread a little bit over here.

But it's more of a sub discussion so I don't think it's necessary to do any merging/moving yet

Ian