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Instructions
The importance of a clear site structure
The structure of your site is composed of the actual pages on your site and how those pages are organized. Your visitor’s path through those pages should be direct and clear.
Have you ever gone to a site and had no idea where anything was? You needed to get specific information, but had to go through three or four menu areas before finding what you needed? Or kept needing to backtrack? That is a site with poor site structure.
You probably felt frustrated. Or annoyed. Or maybe even angry.
That’s how your visitors feel if they visit your site with a specific goal in mind, but get lost in your site because your site’s navigation is unclear.
Don’t let your visitors get lost in your site. Make their path clear and their marker posts obvious.
How do I make my site's structure clear?
The first thing you want to do is make sure your site isn’t overloaded with pages.
Analytics show that on average visitors go to 4 or less pages per site per visit.
If your site has 300 pages, no matter how well organized it is, your visitors won’t stick around long enough to find anything.
So before adding a new page, ask if it would be more appropriate to add the content to an existing page. These days, people prefer to scroll through a longer page on a single topic, rather than clicking through multiple pages.
The ROT test
You don’t just want to make sure the physical number of pages is manageable. You also want to ensure the page content passes the ROT test: is the content Relevant, Outdated, or Trivial?
Relevant: Does this content benefit your audience? Does it support your site’s purpose?
Outdated: Is this information still current? Will it be outdated soon, and if so is there a plan to remove it at that point?
Trivial: Will this content help many people, or just one or two? If it’s just one or two, they may be better served emailing or calling.
Navigation rules
There are a few basic rules when it comes to organizing your pages in your navigation.
Rule 1: menu layers
Every page (except your homepage) should be in your navigational menu.
Your homepage is linked at the top of every page in your site, so it’s redundant to add it to the navigational menu.
For all your other pages, adding them to a well-structured navigational menu makes it easier for visitors to find pages and navigate through your site. It also helps search engine crawlers to better understand your site.
You’re limited to three menu layers: top-level, secondary, and sub-secondary. Though you can technically add more layers, they will display the same as the sub-secondary menu items.
Your menu has a hierarchical organization. Sub-secondary layers are nested under secondary layers, and secondary layers are nested under top-level navigation.
Your menu hierarchy should be structured so the pages in nested menus have the same theme/category as the parent menus.
Rule 2: menu items
Each menu should have 2-7 items - 5 is the ideal number, though.
Each menu area (top level menu or a single secondary or sub-secondary menu) needs a limited number of menu items.
Only one menu item, and the menu will get looked over.
More than seven and there are too many items for your visitor to scan - they’ll miss what may otherwise be important menu links.
Rule 3: naming conventions
Create topic-based menu titles that are unique to the page’s content.
Your visitors need to know what content they’ll find when they click on a menu link title, before the page loads.
As such, your menu link titles need to be specific to the page content. For example, “people” is not an effective menu link title. It could represent too many things - staff biographies, directory, faculty listings, grad students, etc.
Instead, you’ll want the specific content for that page, such as “Staff Biographies”.
Rule 4: menu-based navigation
Organize your menu so the most important (or most popular)
links are are the start and end of the menu.
People skim menus like they skim essays: they start with the beginning and end, then go into the middle if needed.
So organize your menu with the important stuff at the beginning and end.
The exception is if you have a menu organized around a process - in that case it should be based on the order of the process.
Video Walkthrough
You can check out a video walkthrough that covers the basics of managing your site's navigation.
Adding to navigation by editing a page
Not all pages have this option. When editing a page, you'll see a "Menu Settings" option in the right sidebar of the page, if this option is available.
If you have one of those pages, check the “Provide a menu link” box to add the link.
Menu link title is the actual displayed text. Make it topical and focused.
Description is text that appears on hover. It's not required, and is not beneficial for accessibility.
Parent Item helps you build your structure. <PSU Primary Menu> puts this in the top-level. Anything else will place it in a sub-menu under the selected parent. Note: You can only select published pages as parent pages.
Weight determines how high or low your menu item will display in the menu. There's an easier way to do this, though, under "Reordering your menu" on this page.
Save your changes
Adding to navigation using the PSU Primary Menu
You can add any page to your navigation menu using this option. However, your site's menu should be for navigating within your site. If you want to create links to other resources,
do that using CTA and Link Blocks.
Go to the “Structure → PSU Primary Menu → Add Link” to create the menu link.
Menu link title is the actual displayed text. Make it topical and focused.
Link is where the link actually goes. If you've created the page already, you can start typing the page title and select it from the list of options. Note: You can only select published pages as parent pages.
Enabled - leave this checked, otherwise the menu link won't display.
Description is text that appears on hover. It's not required, and is not beneficial for accessibility.
Show as expanded - leave this unchecked, by default all our menu items show as expanded
Parent Item helps you build your structure. <PSU Primary Menu> puts this in the top-level. Anything else will place it in a sub-menu under the selected parent.
Weight determines how high or low your menu item will display in the menu. There's an easier way to do this, though, under "Reordering your menu" on this page.
Save your changes
Reordering your menu
While you can use the weight to reorder menu items, it can get rather clunky. This is an easier method. However, you can only do this with menu links that have already been created.
Go to the “Structure → PSU Primary Menu".
Hover over the crosshairs next to the menu item you want to move.
Click and drag on the crosshairs to move the menu link item up or down. You can also create parent-child relationships with this (nesting menu items).
Save your changes.
Important note: When ordering your sub-navigation, secondary navigation without a third layer of navigation under it will always move to the end of the sub-menu.
If all of your sub-menu navigation is secondary level, you can order it as desired. The same applied if all of your sub-menu navigation contains second and third layer navigation. However, if you have some sub-navigation that is mixed, then the secondary-only navigation will always be at the end of your menu structure.
Important information about top-level navigation
Top-level navigation items can either be a direct links with no sub-navigation, or a clickable drop-down menu that displays sub-navigation. Sub-navigation is secondary navigation and beyond; the items that display in the drop-down mega menu.
With the second option (having sub-navigation), the top-level item will not be accessible unless you add it to the sub-navigation menu. Instructions can be found below in "Creating top-level links with secondary navigation".
For accessibility purposes, your top-level navigation items should either all be direct links with no sub-navigation, or all contain sub-navigation items.
This is because screen readers read the drop-down top-level navigation differently than direct links, so mixed top level navigation is difficult for screen reader users to interpret.
So if you have mixed navigation, use the instructions below to create a sub-menu for the single-item top-level navigation links which contains just the link to what would have been the top-level page.
Your top-level menu is limited by the amount of space you have. When adding pages to it, review the spacing to see if you need to rename menu link titles so it doesn't look "shoved together".
Creating top-level links with sub-navigation (from scratch)
Start by creating one of your sub-navigation pages. Alternatively, if you're adding a link in the sub-navigation to what would have been the top-level navigation link, make the top-level page instead.
Add the page to the navigation menu, using the instructions in "Adding to navigation by editing a page" (at the top of this page). Important: the menu link title should be what you want the top-level navigation title to be. This can be different than the page name. Save your page.
Now, follow the instruction in "Adding to navigation using the PSU Primary Menu" to create a new menu link:
The menu link title should be what you want to display in the secondary navigation.
In the link field, type in the page title of the page you just created.
The parent should be the top-level menu item you just created.
Save your changes.
All about redirects
What is a redirect?
A redirect is a way to programmatically tell our system that when someone goes to a specified URL, they should actually be sent to a different URL instead. That way, the old URL (which someone may have saved in their browser or found through an old link) will still get them to the right place.
My site is changing its URL, do I need to make a redirect for every page?
No, you don't! As part of the transition to the new pdx.edu, we are implementing 1:1 URL redirects. You can read more about that in the Redirects for sites changing URLs blog post. There are some instances where you may want to manually create a redirect, mentioned in the blog post. If that's the case, you'll want to use the instructions on this page to create that redirect.
What's the difference between a URL alias and a redirect?
Let's say I have a page on my site: "About Us", and the URL is /../example-site/about-us. However, on my old site, the URL was /../example-site/about-us-0
The /about-us-0 is not a very attractive URL so I don't want to maintain it for the future. As such, I'd want a redirect. That way when a person goes to /../example-site/about-us-0, the URL in the address bar is changed to /../example-site/about-us. The new (more attractive) URL is the only authentic URL for the page.
A URL alias is a way to change the authentic URL for a page (the URL displayed in the user's address bar). Every page comes with a default alias based on the page title, but you can customize that alias using the Managing URLs documentation. It's best practice to have one alias for a page, though you can make multiple redirects.
How to make a redirect
Making a URL redirect is pretty straightforward. It is important to note, though, that you can only make redirects for originating URLs on your own site. You cannot make redirects from other site's pages. You can, however, make a redirect to a different page or site.
To make a redirect:
Login to your site
In the admin menu, navigate to “Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Redirects” (pdx.edu/site-name/admin/config/search/redirect)
Click "Add redirect"
Complete the form:
Path: This is the old URL. You'll notice it already has your site URL written before the text field; just enter the end of the URL (everything after your site name).
To: This is the new URL (on your site). If it's a page you've previously published, just start typing the page name and you can select it from the list of options. You shouldn't make redirects to pages you haven't published.
Redirect status: It defaults to "301 Moved Permanently". That's generally what you should leave it as, but you can change it if need be. Just be sure you understand what the other options are before selecting a different one.
Save the redirect, then test it to ensure everything works as intended.
Example 1: Internal Site Redirect
Let's say the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science had an About page with the URL (on their old http://pdx.edu site) of pdx.edu/cecs/about-0
With the http://pdx.edu upgrade, that URL will automatically update to pdx.edu/engineering/about-0
However, the new URL for that page is pdx.edu/engineering/about. We don't want to keep the /about-0 alias, since it's not very attractive. So in this case we want to make a redirect. This is how we would complete the form:
Path: about-0
To: (start typing title of new About page, and select it from the dropdown list)
Redirect status: 301 Moved Permanently
Example 2: Cross-Site Redirect
In this case, the University Policy Library used to be located on the Office of the General Counsel site, with the URL of http://pdx.edu/ogc/university-policy-library
That page is now a fully formed site with a URL of http://pdx.edu/policies . However, the old URL is likely bookmarked for people, so we want to make a redirect for it.
The OGC site has a new URL of /general-counsel, so the old URL is automatically transitioning to http://pdx.edu/general-counsel/university-policy-library . Remember: you always make the redirect on the originating site.
So in this case, we'll want to make the redirect on the OGC site (http://pdx.edu/general-counsel ). This is how we would complete it:
Path: university-policy-library
To: /../policies (you can and should use relative links in redirects, when linking to a separate http://pdx.edu site)
Redirect status: 301 Moved Permanently
Redirects for 404 error pages
What is a 404 error?
A 404 error is also known as a "page not found" error. You get this error when the url you're trying to go to doesn't connect to an actual page. This can be fixed using redirects, though.
When not to make a redirect for a 404 error
That's up to you! Sometimes you have URLs for old pages which don't exist anymore, because the content is no longer relevant. In that case, you may choose to leave the 404 error as is, rather than making a redirect.
Making a redirect for a 404 error page
In some cases, you might already know which pages are going to make a 404 error. You might even encounter them yourself. However, that's not always the case.
Luckily, though, there is an admin page in our system that lets you see which URLs site visitors are going to which are giving them 404 errors. To find your 404 error pages:
Login to your site
In the admin menu, navigate to “Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Redirects → Fix 404 pages” (pdx.edu/site-name/admin/config/search/redirect/404)
This page shows you all the 404 errors being produced on your site. If you click on "Add redirect" to the right of a listed path, it will take you to the "Add redirect" page with the originating URL path already filled in. You just need to fill in the page you want that URL to redirect to, and make sure you're choosing the right status.
What is a URL alias?
The URLs used you generally see in the address bar are not the actual URLs for your pages. The actual URLs look something more like "pdx.edu/node/123". That's not very user friendly.
As such, we create URL aliases to replace the node/# with something more user friendly. For most pages, the URL Alias defaults to the page title. However, you can customize it.
Updating/Customizing your URL aliases
From the Edit tab of a page
Some content types, such as Landing Pages and a few others, have a "URL ALIAS" menu item on the right side of the page. You can see it when editing the page.
When that menu is expanded, there is a checkbox to "Generate automatic URL alias". If you leave this checked, the URL alias will default to the page title. Uncheck that box to create a custom URL alias.
Once the box is unchecked, enter the new end to your URL in the textbox. The new URL must start with a / - the alias is what will show after your site name in the URL structure.
Example: If you are working on the health-counseling site and want the URL for the page to be pdx.edu/health-counseling/about, your alias would be /about.
From the URL alias admin menu
There is also an admin area where you can edit the URL aliases for any pages on your site. Navigate to this area by going to: “Configuration → Search and metadata → URL aliases” in the admin menu.
You can use the Filter Aliases section to find aliases with specific text in them.
To edit an alias, click "Edit" to the right of the alias.
Existing system path is the actual page the alias is associated with. You'll notice it shows as /node/### - that's the true URL for the page.
If you want to make this alias associated with a different page, you can find the node in the address bar when editing a page. When you edit the page, the true URL (with the node number) displays.
Path alias is the alias you want. use the format /end-of-URL - with that section being what displays after your site name in the URL.
Important notes
You cannot use top-level URLs as an alias
Our URLs are structured as: http://pdx.edu/ top-level/page-name. You cannot have the same end URL as a top-level page/site URL (the text directly after the http://pdx.edu/ ).
For example, http://pdx.edu/research exists. So you cannot have a page with an end URL of "research" (i.e. pdx.edu/health-counseling/research). Instead, you have to have a unique end URL, such as pdx.edu/health-counselg/our-research.
You cannot make aliases for other sites
The URL aliases you make will always associate with your site. You cannot make an alias that would connect the page to a different site.
Fixing it when the alias you want to use is in use on a different page
Sometimes you'll make a page and it take one alias, but then you want that alias to be used on a different page. To fix this, just go to the URL alias admin menu (as referenced in the above instructions) and change the page the alias is associated with.
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