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Web Sites With Publisher |
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A.Webster Feb 2005 |
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Websters on the Web |
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Site Structure How your site is structured has a massive effect on its usability. Users should know where they are, be able to navigate to other main areas easily and know where to go to next. Publisher makes it easy to add hyperlinks to text and images (e.g. buttons) by selecting them then using Insert then Hyperlink on the menu. It is particularly easy to set up a link to another page within the same site. Where am I? The navigation buttons take you to different pages. The title of the page should reflect the button text so that users know which section they are looking at. Where next? Navigation bars are useful for going to main sections. It is also useful to add buttons to the foot of each page to suggest to users where they might go next. Back, Next and Home buttons are useful buttons to include. Avoid "dead ends" with no links out. How do I get back to? How frustrating it is to know you have seen something on a site but you can't find it now. The dropdown box above the navigation bar attempts to solve this problem by taking you straight to any page. See the more javascript page for details. Cross-referencing Hyperlinks that cross-reference your site (like that in the paragraph above) will make your site easy to navigate. Structure Diagrams Any moderately complex site will be hard to manage if you try to remember it all. Instead sketch out a diagram with the pages and their links. Start with the homepage at the top and work your way down. Write down page titles, filenames and page numbers for future reference. Checking Links Publisher has no tools to check your links. Several non-commercial programs are available to do this. Do a google search for "link checker" to find some, otherwise put aside plenty of time for testing. Larger Web Sites If you have many pages then there are several strateries you should consider:
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