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Site Design & Promotion: Creating a Site's Family Tree

Originally Published: 2001-04-10;
Revised: 2006-01-31
Updated: 2006
Before you create the first page on your Web Site, think of what you will be sharing through that same Site. This article discusses planning out contents for a site.

Let's figure out what you may be presenting, as far as content, through the Web site. Not the name for the site, but thinking about the potential content.

Take a notebook and a pen, sit back and think of the main theme. Then write a list of what you may wish to share under that theme. List side topics of that theme, more narrowed (or focused) topics under that theme, if you want to post a resume . . . whatever you think of, add it onto the list.

This list may be long or short as you are just brainstorming right now about potential content. When you feel all the options have been listed for the site, set the notebook to one side and take a break.

Become clearer about what the site will present.

Later, after a little time has passed, look over that list. What items or ideas can you pair together? What do you feel can stand alone as a Web page yet link to others within your site? What ones of those stand alone pages do you feel deserve heavier visibility and what ones would be better suited offered links to through inner pages? This is how you will plot out your basic section or categories of content for your site.

While doing this, make notes of sample ideas of any name possibilities for those sections. Try to keep the section names short yet informative. You can use longer titles on the individual pages within those sections or, on the main page, share a descriptive sentence or two about each section.

Start thinking about attracting reader's interest.

Section names can double as teasers or bait to the readers also. You want to hook their interest and reel them in to the inner pages of content! You also have to remember that many of those same readers will likely be skimming the contents of your pages. So by keeping things short and sweet helps to strive for section names that may jump out and help catch their eye.

For example, which one would grasp your attention better:

Which one grabbed your attention? Lastly, the ten-thousand dollar question, which one will grab your site guests' interest?

Start putting our notes to work!

You now have these lists, and maybe even some of items originally listed now crossed off that list. What was the purpose of this writing and note scribbling? I refer to this exercise as starting to formulate the basic family tree, or network of pages, for your Web site.

With those sheets of paper, you started to decide and narrow down what the offspring are and the ones reproducing or likely to produce more offspring for you to work with. It also helped to decide which ones may remain single or childless.

Now you can figure out why I was comparing it to a family tree in regarding how a Site branches out and create more branches. What is the ancestral root of this Web site's family tree? The index.html file that will be created takes on the role of being the Main page of the site.

However this exercise did not have you only thinking of contents you can present through section in the site but also the beginnings of your linking strategy for those inner pages of content.


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