Navigation, Categories, Archives, Recent Posts and Breadcrumbs

dallas123

The navigation system of a site, be it a traditionally-structured website or a blog, is always important. <snip> You'll be surprised how many blogs have a deficient navigational system that makes it hard for new and old visitors to find other articles on your site. By navigation system, I don't just mean a link to your main page and "About" page. Those sorts of links are probably present in all the default themes in every blog script. Rather, I mean a way for your visitors to find other articles that you have written on, say, a particular topic. Or perhaps, if you have somehow made a fan of that visitor, a way for him/her to access your all your older articles. Many blog systems have, by default, archive pages, where your articles are linked to according to month. While archive pages are not without its problems, they at least function as a sort of site map that you see in traditionally-structured websites.
If you have eliminated such archive pages, and perhaps even if you have not, I suggest you take a look at implementing "categories" or "tags" for your blog posts. This allows you to place every post that you make in a particular category. The blog or CMS software then automatically generates a new index for you for that category. In your new theme or template, make sure that you link to these category pages somewhere. Put it on every page, perhaps in your side panel or something. Don't rely on the automatic links created by the blog software at the bottom of each post linking to the tag for that particular topic. Give your visitors the ability to reach every category from any page. Some blogging software allow you to do this easily by putting a "tag cloud" on your side panel (WordPress springs to mind here). If you have that facility, use it. And then when you post, maintain the discipline of tagging all your posts, to put them into some meaningful category. If there is a particular ad-hoc post that doesn't belong to any category (because, for example, you traditionally don't post such topics), then put it in a "miscellaneous" catch-all category. But don't post everything into "miscellaneous", obviously, or else your tagging system becomes useless.
If you find tag clouds ugly, or you have too many tags to place into the side panel, another way to improve the usability of your blog is to create a master index page that links to all the category indices on your site, and link to that master index from every page. A useful feature, usually provided by default in most (if not all) blog software, is the ability to list the recent posts to the blog in the side panel. Do not remove this feature when you redesign your theme. Recent posts are another navigational aid to your site, and it keeps interested visitors on your blog. Another way to improve navigation in your blog is to leave breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are something like the "You are here" markers on the newer pages of thesitewizard.com and thefreecountry.com. They help your visitors navigate around your site. Blogging software typically have very poor support for breadcrumbs. However, don't break your back over implementing this if your software does not. Most (if not all) of the breadcrumb advantages disappear when you implement tagging or categories for your post. Tagging also tends to be more flexible, in that you can place a post into multiple categories, while traditionally designed breadcrumbs forces an article into only one category.

Axwell

Whats the point of this post apart from you trying to fit in a link to your web design business in the first few lines?

gmitStu

Posted today (or yesterday at this stage) at 6.00pm.

I get banned at the drop of a hat for calling an idiot an idiot in After Hours while this post hasn't managed to catch a single moderators eye yet.(I'm assuming if a mod has seen this thread they would remove it straight away)

Fantastic work there fellas.

Liam Byrne

dallas123 wrote: »

The navigation system of a site, be it a traditionally-structured website or a blog, is always important.

Punctuation, paragraph breaks and whitespace are pretty important too. :rolleyes: