daddyalfie Posted March 23, 2010 Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 What should a site map be? I picture it as essentially an organization chart of your site. Should such a graphic (or list) have clickable links to the elements? Thanks all dudes and dudesses! Alfie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickham Posted March 23, 2010 Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 Should such a graphic (or list) have clickable links to the elements? It must have clickable links to serve its purpose. It could be an image with image map "hotspots" over the text or images but it's normally a series of hyperlinks, possibly divided into appropriate sections under headings. It's important to have a site map if you have a drop down menu that only works with javascript or Flash so that if people have these disabled, they have an alternative way of navigating a site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSW Posted March 23, 2010 Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 The site map is just a shortcut to the structure of the site and should reflect the structure of the site. Wickham makes a good point as usual with the drop down menu... However it is a great tool for the disabled: They easily have a structure they can scan through to find what they want without confusing jumps from here to there for those with cognitive issues and you need to structure it clearly with header tags so vision impaired users can skip between the topics using the headers and then tab through the live links to find what they need. It is a great tool for search engines: I always made sure I added my site map to the index. You are offering all your links, and those sorted logically all on one page for the search engine to index all at once and move on. It will not hurt your ratings for sure and may even improve them. As my cognitive issues have become worse I use site maps more often. On smaller sites less so, but mega sites like Wacom, HP & Micro$oft... I go straight for4 site maps when they have them rather than choose this from a drop down that offers more drop downs to choose from and lead to more drop downs or lists of more links... one trait of Asperger Syndrome is a lack of patience and dislike for complication... I find many modern sites to complicated to sift through... site maps are always a good alternative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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