Apr02Results

Results of Information Architecture IRC chat

At noon eastern on April 2, Olivier Deckmyn, Lennart Regebro, and Paul Everitt got together for an IRC chat regarding newzopeorg's design and information architecture. The Apr02ChatLog is available. This document summarizes the decisions made during the chat.

Page Structure

There are types of pages on new.zope.org (nza):

a. Home page. This is the top-most page and might have extra layout.

b. Subpage. This describes the layout of common elements for all pages on the site under the home page.

All pages on the site will have the following common elements:

a. Logo (in the top left).

b. Navbar, aka top menu (top of page, going horizontally).

c. Breadcrumbs (location in the site with backlinks, most likely under logo).

d. User menu (user-centric actions, most likely on same line as breadcrumbs, right justified).

e. Side menu (vertically on left).

f. Content area (text of the current document, news item, etc.)

f. Footer (privacy statement, copyright, etc.)

Some users do not want the side menu on all pages. We might need to provide a facility to allow people to turn the sidemenu off. All in all, though, we are going with a very common layout that will allow people to leverage the scanning skills they have acquired from other sites.

The side menu will actually be broken into two parts: links common to all pages and context-specific links. That is, the side menu is broken into the global side menu and the section menu. The entire side menu will be open on the home page. On subpages, most of the sidemenu will be closed, with the current section expanded.

As discussed below, the side menu is also related to the concept of sections.

The navmenu (or top menu) will contain the basic links that everyone has learned to expect on most large sites:

     home | site map | search [______] (go) | help | print

The home page will have prominent entry points of links organized by audience type: user, developer, webmaster, and business person. This organization by audience will essentially group sections and subsections that are relevant to particular kinds of readers.

Also, links that are very important but one-time use (such as Guided Tour) will be featured prominently on the home page, but not repeated on the side menu.

We discussed the layouts that were voted on and chose the top two (4.1 and 6.2) as the ones to go forward with. We will be doing the following:

a. Convert the mockups to HTML.

b. Integrate the first-round cut at IA.

c. Post results for discussion.

Sections

Sections are a key organizing unit for the site. Each section is focused on a topic or related set of material. Again, this is a common idea that people have learned to use in other sites and CMS systems. Key features of sections:

a. A section has a section owner(s) that is responsible for gardening, adding value, and generally managing the content.

b. A section is a permanent part of the site's organization.

c. Because of (b), a section is not in memberspace.

d. A section has a section menu in the side menu.

e. The top page for a section is similar to a home page. It might have a section news bar, some different layout, etc.

Sections are also the first level entries in the site map.

Information Architecture

The structure of the site and navigation elements on the pages were previously discussed in a email by Lennart. This sparked some more discussion on the zope-web mailing list. We made decisions about this structure.

There are three basic axes of site navigation:

a. Navbar, containing generic site navigation features.

b. Sections.

c. Audience type, which is really a relabelling of material in the sections.

Below is a sample layout of the section structure:

    News

      Opens the news page.  A shorter version will also appear in a
      box in the content area of the home page.

    About Zope

      What is Zope?
      Awards
      Getting Started
      Report bugs
      About Zope.org

    Documentation

      References
        API, DTML, Quick Ref
      The Zope Book
      Zope Developer Guide
      Zope Administrator Guide
      Articles
      How-To's
      Books in print

    Download

      Zope
      Featured products
      Products by category
      All products

    Projects

      Zope 3

    Community

      Mailing lists
      Zope-powered sites
      Zope User Groups
      IRC

The by-audience organization:

    User
      What is Zope?
        Guided Tour
      Getting Started
      Mailing Lists
        [email protected]
        [email protected]

    Developer
      Developers Documentation
      Zope Developers Guide
      Links to relevant parts of Zope Book
      Getting Started
        Links to BoringProduct and other stuff
      Mailing Lists

    Webmaster
       Documentation
         Zope Administrators Guide
         Links to relevant parts of Zope Book
       Mailing Lists
         [email protected]
         [email protected]
         [email protected]
         [email protected]
         [email protected]
         [email protected]
       Reporting Bugs

    Business (Maybe just links to zope.com?)
      What is Zope?
      Zope Corporation
      Zope Solution Providers
      Zope Marketing
      Hosting
      Case Studies
      Awards
      Sites
      Media Coverage