In 2002 I printed out an article from the now defunct Web Review. It was an article written by Lou Rosenfeld called, "Organizing Your Site from A-Z." The article doesn't seem to exist any more (nor does it appear to be archived in the Wayback Machine). The article talked about site indexes and gave the Adobe site (which also appears to no longer exist) as an example of best practices. Here are a few notes (and excerpts) from the original article.
A site index is an example of a Supplemental Navigation System (SNS). These systems provide an alternative to navigating a site via is main organizational system. The most common examples of SNSs are site-wide search engines, site maps and table of contents. There is no "right" SNS for every site as different types of audiences will have different ways they want to search for, and access, content.
Site indexes are similar to the manually-created indexes that can be found at the back of a book. They are typically long alphabetical lists of terms that can be easily scanned. Compared to the other SNSs listed previously, site indexes sort very "small" bits of information. Unlike a table of contents which shows only heading-level topics, site indexes show a full hierarchy of content. Site indexes do not show hierarchy (something that a table of contents does show) instead they flatten the headings and display major topics, and minor references all together. Site indexes support users who know what they're looking for and are technically easier to put together than configuring a search engine (although this doesn't necessarily mean it's less time consuming).
Steps to Creating a Site Index
- Refresh yourself on who your site's users are an what their general information needs are.
- Review your site and compile a list of content components you believe your site's users will find important. You may start by flattening your site's hierarchy into topics and then alphabetizing these topics, but don't stop there. Content components may comprise groups of pages in your site, individual pages, or sections of an individual page. You won't find the latter by simply looking at your site's table of contents.
- Whack your list down to size. You want your list to be easy to scan. Maybe 30-60 entries is appropriate for your site, maybe more? Group entries where possible. For example: do you need to list MBA, PhD and Bachelor programs separately, or can these all fit under a single heading, "Academic programs"? If you have an extremely large site you may need to break the list into multiple pages for each letter of the alphabet. Make sure each of these sub-pages is easily scanned.
- Term rotate. If your site index spans several pages, make terms easier to find by offering multiple "first letter"s. For example: "New Orleans Map" may also be listed as, "Map, New Orleans." Be conservative with term rotation so that it helps your readers instead of just making your site index longer than it needs to be.
There is no "right" way to create a site index, but there are several automated options for those who are using Drupal for their Web site. These automated tools do not necessarily allow you to index sub-topics within your page; however, this may be good enough for your site.
Drupal modules for creating human-readable site indexes include:
There is also a Site map module which will flatten your Drupal site and give you a list of all pages contained on your Web site.
