[Web Comm] Website map ...

[Jason Birch]

Hey, that's cool seeing it visually, and I think that there is real value in visualizing potential user paths to ensure that we cover off all potential navigation requirements.
 
Findability is an important concept here.  If we make our content "findable" then we also have to structure the site to be as interlinked as possible.  We need to provide the ability to users to quickly get to the content that they might be interested in regardless of their landing page.  This means a consistent and multi-dimensional site structure.  
 
I like what Tyler and Jo have done getting the projects and committees on the left, but I think that this needs to be a multi-level menu, and the urls should reflect it.  So project info sheets would be under projects/geotools/, committee pages would be under committees/webcommittee/, and foundation stuff would be under foundation/governance, etc.  I've attached a couple images of a Drupal site that I maintain (I think it may even be using the same template) showing how this would sort of look, though my breadcrumbs and URLs suck because I'm stuck on IIS and can't use mod_rewrite.
 
We also need a breadcrumb area at the top of each page, so users can intuitively work their way up the directory structure from their current page rather than having to bounce up to the main page.  If you find yourself trimming parts of the URL to try to get up a level, we've done something wrong on the site design.
 
If we provide enough intuitive paths, all users will be able to find what they want.  And for those obstinate few that prefer search to find (browse), Drupal nicely searches all content. :)
 
I'm not sure how I feel about the member blogs (I often blog about non-OS stuff) incidentally.  I don't know if this is appropriate on the main page of the site or not...
 
Jason

________________________________

From: Jody Garnett [mailto:jgarnett at refractions.net]
Sent: Wed 2006-10-11 9:00 PM
To: dev at webcommittee.osgeo.org
Subject: [Web Comm] Website map ...



I am a bit concerned that this planning artifact I have asked for is not
specific enough.
>    * website map, optimize "workflow" for target users, pending
Here is a sample to get conversation going, I have put together a
website map based on the what I can reverse engineer of the drupal site
prototype (http://community.osgeo.org/en).

I tried to run through the site with a couple example users, and did not
get very far - this only illustrates the technique.

Cheers,
Jody
Note: the file is in Open Office (just because I know Jo will like it
that way)





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