Website Information Architecture

The original (Fall 2004) website design and implementation team (Stuart Guest-Smith and Bob Doyle) worked together to produce an "agile" development methodology dictated by time pressures and the absence of a design budget. Despite the time pressure, we had a content audit, prepared IA wireframes and a navigation design. Unfortunately, nav design stopped at the second level of the site taxonomy.

The 2005 website committee is now redesigning the information architecture and navigation. Their goal is a complete website redesign for the Fall 2005 Summit.

Information Architecture Goals

• Separation of presentation templates from editable content
• CSS control of all styling
• Templated pages to share global navigation structures (one banner for whole site)
• Templated pages to share left/local navigation structures (different for sections and subsections)
• Reusable content elements (news and features)
• Reusable right-hand block elements
• Reusable footer for whole site
• Six main sections (with landing pages) See Site Map
  • About CM Pros (7 second-level pages)
  • Membership (10 second-level pages, 2 third-level)
  • Resources (5 second-level pages, 19 third-level)
  • Education (2 second-level pages)
  • Events (3 second-level pages, 5 third-level)
  • Organization (8 second-level pages, 9 third-level, 35 fourth-level)
• Subsections
  • Resources > Website (18 third-level pages, 2 fourth-level)
  • Events > Summit (5 third-level pages)
  • Organization > Management (9 third-level pages, 35 fourth-level)
  • Management subsections have 5 fourth-level pages
  • About CM Pros > Press Releases
  • Resources > Mailing Lists
• Several special pages
  • Calendar
  • Member Directory
  • Job Board
  • Resources Library
  • Best Practices
  • Glossary
  • Shopping Cart
• Page layouts
  • General pages have 3-columns
  • Home page 2/3 on left, with right blocks
  • Special pages 2/3 on right, with left/local navigation (see wireframes below)
• Template implementation. Page templates can include arbitrary content elements, and these content elements in turn can be templated to contain smaller reusable elements. The new CM Pros templates contain five basic page components.
  • Banner - with logo, tagline, quick links, global navigation menus, and the search/login toolbar
  • Left/local navigation
  • Main content area (can be subdivided with a template for reusable elements)
  • Right blocks (filled from 10 reusable elements)
  • Footer

Wireframes

Original wireframes (September 2004)

Wireframes, Stuart Guest-Smith and Lee Sinclair

IA diagram (PDF) by Todd O'Neill