Design idea - good, bad or indifferent?

CMS & WordPress
1

Guys,

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes …

looking for some feedback on a design idea - here it is:

What I’m thinking of doing is having multiple categories - maybe 7 or 8.

Each of these categories can have multiple child categories.

I want to build a horizontal nav of all the top level categories (not hyperlinked) which when moused-over (is that a real phrase?) will show a drop down of all child categories which, if clicked, will take the user to the child category page.

So, I’m toying with the idea of using the top-level categories for navigation only - they won’t have any posts within them, all posts will be within the child categories.

The only way a user can get to the top-level catgeory page is either by accident or from a SE where that page has been indexed.

If they do get to a top-level cat page then I’ll list all the child categories within it and let them choose which child categoery they want.

Why? I hear you cry … simply because I want really tidy navigation withou having rows and rows of it - and I don’t want to have to hard-code category id’s to get a tidy navbar.

So any ideas … good, bad, indifferent or stupid?

TIA

2

I think you misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that the navigation bar would show the top level categories, then in the drop down would be the sub-categories. When you click one of those sub-categories, that’s where all of the articles are (the articles aren’t in the navigation bar itself).

I thought you meant have the sub-cats in the top-level nav bar.

But what you described above is exactly what I was considering but, bearing in mind the issues around useability with not linking the top-level cats … I might just scrap it.

Or I might just go ahead and see how it pans out. Not ideal I know but…

Decision, decisions…

3

Almost good.

The idea of a category with subcategories which have all the posts is good.

I think you were a bit off the mark with two small details:

First off, you can list all of the sub-categories in the top-level category with each of their articles under them.

The other reason is if you don’t hyperlink them and you have Javascript and/or CSS off, it could become unusable if it isn’t hyperlinked (depending on your technique).

Also, there is no reason to hide a perfectly useful page. They could like to look at the larger lists (I usually do myself).

I think the overall idea is good though. I’ve actually used a similar method on my site, http://htmlblox.com.

4

Unless there is an addon out there. If you have an Apple category, and childs of iPhone, iPad, and iTouch. All the i[whatever] will be listed under Apple if you go to yoursite.com/Apple.

Also, for keyboard users, they may not be able to get to your submenus, which would mean they would have to click on the parents, which you aren’t linking…

5

First off, you can list all of the sub-categories in the top-level category with each of their articles under them.

Can’t do that. the point of the approach is to limit the scope/size of the nav bar so listing all sub-categories in the navbar just breaks that idea.

Javascript off - yeah I was thinking about useability issues, thanks for pointing it out.

  1. For each sub category list popular posts/most read etc on the top level page, or even the latest x posts for each sub category.
  1. Option to add sub category icons and descriptions to tell your visitors what they’re about and provide more information
  2. List sub categories by order of popularity, number of posts, alphabetically etc

Yeah, the homepage does a similar thing - list latest post from each category (or sub-category).

So my idea was really about using top-level categories as placeholders, no more than that.

Thanks for replying and the ideas.

6

For completeness … I went for the solution involving having the top-level categories linked.

For what I wanted, I had to hack around a little with the $_GET var to compare cat no’s etc but it works … and it’s accessible.

Cheers.

7

I s’pose, bearing in mind the problems it will cause then I’ll think of another way.

cheers.

8

I think you misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that the navigation bar would show the top level categories, then in the drop down would be the sub-categories. When you click one of those sub-categories, that’s where all of the articles are (the articles aren’t in the navigation bar itself).

9

That sounds like a perfectly normal method to me, using a category based structure is a logical approach.

Don’t assume that top-level category pages have little importance though. Chances are they’ll be indexed by seach engines so you may get a lot of visitors landing on them!

Depending on what your visitors are looking for you have the potential to make these top level pages very attractive, here’s a few ideas:

  1. For each sub category list popular posts/most read etc on the top level page, or even the latest x posts for each sub category.
  2. Option to add sub category icons and descriptions to tell your visitors what they’re about and provide more information
  3. List sub categories by order of popularity, number of posts, alphabetically etc