Site Organization Standards?

Wed

JAN

2004

This article is just as timely today as it was when it was written in 1998: A Standard for Site Organization, by Greg Knauss (with several brains and contributors) at Stating the Obvious. The example root level site structure makes a lot of sense for visitors and for developing and maintaining a website. Since 1998 I suspect you’ll see quite a few sites that follow a similar approach, although there are plenty that don’t, too.

Over time I’ve found this root level site structure to work incredibly well. For site developers and site owners, it’s more than worth taking the relatively little amount of time needed to think about a site’s overall structure for the long term and establish a solid root structure. Keep it simple, easy, consider longevity, and consider what will be a URL-friendly approach for site visitors.

More on Friendly URLs

For more on friendly URLs, these posts also include links to helpful information and resources:

Update 12 Jan 2004 · 8pm, pst

Be sure to check out Site Architecture Standards, a post by Tony Stephens at Blog-fu regarding the above article, where you’ll find interesting commentary about the details of the directory structure.

07:32 pm, pst 7 January, 2004 Comments, Trackbacks (7) ·

Categories: Development, Information Architecture, Standards, Usability

Comments

Comments, Trackbacks: 7 so far. Add yours!

Shirley Kaiser has an excellent post that pointed me back to a most wonderful article from 1998. A Standard for Site Organization. This article, by Greg Knauss, outlines an ideal root-level directory structure. His presented ideal is one that I’v...

12 Jan, 2004Trackback from Blog-Fu
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Some links that have been building up while I've had my head buried in some every mundane work. Many have done the rounds but this is as much for my catch up as anything... D. Keith Robinson of asterisk* posts...

26 Jan, 2004Trackback from dwh!{dezwozhere:blog}
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There's an excellent entry from January on Brainstorms & Raves blog about standards for Web site organization and ways to create user-friendly URLs. Excerpts: This article is just as timely today as it was when it was written in 1998:...

13 May, 2004Trackback from Digital Med-Ed: Educational Technology in Medicine
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It’s a shame there is no way to navigate to the home page from that page, and when you get to the home page the standards aren’t applied. It’s also a shame that the example link to 'about' actually takes you to 'archives', which - in its disorienting effect - is worse than no link at all. But the points are sound, if the execution is flawed.
04:37 am, pdt10 August, 2004Comment by Rich
comment #4 permalink ·
Rich,
I agree with your comments about that site’s navigation problems. That certainly reminds us all of the importance of linking back to the home page from every page at the site and making sure navigation links (and other links, too) go where they say they’re going, huh?!

Thanks for your comments. :-)
10:17 am, pdt10 August, 2004Comment by Shirley Kaiser
comment #5 permalink ·
There's an excellent entry from January on Brainstorms & Raves blog about standards for Web site organization and ways to create user-friendly URLs. Excerpts: This article is just as timely today as it was when it was written in 1998:...

30 Dec, 2004Trackback from Digital Med-Ed: Educational Technology in Medicine
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22 Jun, 2005Trackback from istvánblog
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