Best Practices for Site Map page

Accessibility
1

I build a custom WordPress site for a client who does not have a lot of experience with common practices with site structure, but who has very ambitious plans for what he does with the site.

He has added quite a number of new pages that are not included in the normal site navigation menus, but accessed through links within the page content themselves. This is the way he wants it but it creates a usability issue in terms of the user knowing where he is and where he came from as he navigates through the site. As a remedy for this, I suggested he build a site map page that will list all the pages and sub-pages as an aid for users.

The site’s pages have links to sub-pages, links off-site to apps such as a monthly calendar, and links to content on a Moodle connected with this site, but this content could as easily have been included in sub-pages of the actual site.

Where does he draw the line with what is included in his site map? I think it should just be the actual pages and sub-pages of the site itself, and not the Moodle content. He would like to include everything, as he views this site map as a content outline of the website.

What advice should I give him (other than totally restructuring the website)?

2

If it’s a sitemap for humans, and if your client (or you) is willing to keep it updated, I don’t necessarily see a problem with adding moodle stuff. For a human sitemap, you get to use website stuff in it, so you could have arrows or off-site icons or whatever (see what Wikipedia does for links who go off-site or off-domain).

plus if later on the client realises the importance of site structure and wants to fix it, the human sitemap would help him/her know what all needs attention.

3

Thanks, Stomme poes. That makes sense. So I’ll advise him to keep the links to the Moodle content in the sitemap, because in the end it’s all about making things easier for the user, right?