Creating a navigation system
Plan and prepare your site's structure
By Mike Slocombe for Internet Magazine, May 2004

1. Plan it
Calculate how many pages are going to go on your site and then work out obvious categories to filter them into.

Make sure that each section can accommodate future growth and that the categories are logical.


2. What goes where
Sketch a flow chart (or family tree) to help you plan which pages should go where.

There's loads of fancy pants software available (like Visio, Illustrator, for example) that can help you create super-slick flow charts. But for most people cutting up bits of paper and shoving them around a table does the job just as effectively.


3. Sort out your subsidiaries
If your site's going to need subsidiary navigation, list what's appropriate for each section and consider how you're going to present it on the page.

Make sure that the menus remain consistent throughout the site.

If one subsection ends up with an unwieldy amount of links, you may need to share the content with a new subsection.