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Jump to table of contentsThis chapter defines the organization of web sites.
These are discussed in the following sections.
A web site generally consists of the following parts:
These are discussed in the subsequent sections.
The front page of a web site is a special case of a data page containing content information.
The front page contains the Collective Technologies logo, title, and a menu of some kind for the contents.
The author or team (if appropriate), document number (if any), edition and revision number, date of publication, and any audience restrictions and disclaimers (if required) belong in the footer of the front page or on the revision page.
The vast majority of pages in a web site are data pages. Each data page should contain, at a minimum, the following elements:
These are discussed in the subsequent sections.
The document or page title should appear in the title block of the head and in the h1 block in the body. With the exception of including repetitions of "Collective Technologies" or the site name (such as Outreach or SPECTRA), the text should be identical between the two. For example, a title of "CT SPECTRA Definitions" would have an h1 block of "Definitions" or "SPECTRA Definitions."
There should be navigation links to the parent page, grandparent page, and so on, as appropriate, all the way up to the web site's top-level and CliNK. These can appear with or without icons or graphics, and can appear in the header, the footer, or both.
The content of the data page.
The footer of the page, usually separated from the content by a horizontal rule (hr tag), contains the copyright statement ("Copyright © 2001 Collective Technologies, Inc.") and, if appropriate, links to a detailed legal notices page, a revision history page, or both.
The legal notices page is a special case of the data page containing copyright, trademark, and other legal issues.
For any intranet web site, a detailed legal notices page can be safely omitted and a simple "Copyright © Collective Technologies, Inc." be used in the footer of every data page.
For Internet web sites, there should always be a legal notices page that mentions the legal disclaimers as required by the Legal department. These are generally the following:
Some web sites track a history of revisions or changes. If your web site does so, you should provide those changes on a revision page (or set of pages) in reverse chronological order; that is, the most recent changes appear at the top of the page. Each revision entry should include the revision number (if any), date of the change, person making the change (if relevant), and the context of the change. An example is provided below.
Figure 11
Sample revision page table
Revision Description First Edition, Rev. 1 January 31, 2001. John Doe. Corrected typos in Marketing section. First Edition. January 15, 2001. Jane Smith. Initial release.
The content of the web site is the meat, the bulk of what people are going to use the site for. It can be as pretty or ugly as necessary, but the content must be valuable or the site will not be used.
There are several special types of content to discuss:
These are discussed in the subsequent sections.
If your site has specific information that would belong in a preface, if it were a book, include it on a special page titled "Using this site:"
Any given body text content should be a self-contained unit. For example, the unit could be a chapter or appendix (to use the book analogy), or a section or subsection, depending on the level of complexity of the web site and the body pages. A typical body content page contains the title, content, navigation, and footer elements.
Titles should be short and describe the contents succinctly. Titles should be task-oriented; starting the title with words like Working, Using, Maintaining, and other similar concepts is strongly recommended.
After the title and before any subsidiary-level heading, there can be a brief overview or introductory paragraph that describes the intents and contents of the page.
As with books and proposals, divide every content page into sections (h2) and subsections (H3, H4) by topic. Give each a section header with the appropriate style.
Up to three levels of section and subsection headings are commonly used. More would be confusing. If you need a fourth level, reorganize the content to avoid the problem. Keep secondary and tertiary levels to a minimum.
Divide the bibliography into two parts:
Both parts of the bibliography should have annotated entries. Annotations should be brief -- one to three sentences -- and describe content and pertinence of the entry.
Bibliographies are not mandatory.
A glossary is an alphabetical collection of specialized terms and their meanings within a document. A glossary is intended to stand on its own. Glossaries are not mandatory.
Acronym expansions are required in glossaries. For example, the glossary entry for "MIP" should point to "Managed Infrastructure Provider (MIP)."
The index contains an alphabetical list of topics and page numbers to help readers find information.
Indices only appear in complex books or in permuted form for complex web sites.
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Onward to Chapter 5, "Developing web sites"