Comments on: The Lazy IA’s Guide to Making Sitemaps http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/ Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:43:59 +0000 hourly 1 By: jamesmelzer http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5794 jamesmelzer Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5794 I’ve had some good luck with this Visio technique before. A couple of limitations are worth mentioning. Visio does not perform well with lots of boxes. It crashes a lot. Then there is the issue of formatting. The org chart wizard doesn’t give a lot of options as far as when the finished product looks like.

]]> By: fason http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5795 fason Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5795 I would also like to comment on another amazing diagramming application called OmniGraffle Pro from OmniGroup. I have been using the Pro version since version 3.0. In conjunction with OmniOutliner (very similar to the Outline Mode for MS Word) you can import directly into OmniGraffle to make sitemap diagrams.

The OmniGraffle / Outliner combo is for MacOSX exclusive, but to be honest its the best out there. It allows importing/exporting of Visio XML Diagrams, exports PDFs, JPGs, etc. I cannot speak more highly of this app suite. Where they failed at OmniWeb, they far exceeded with OmniGraffle Pro.

]]> By: bryanjbusch http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5796 bryanjbusch Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5796 OmniGraffle (Pro) 4 has a built-in outliner in a side window (“Utilities”) that will allow you to create your hierarchical text-only view of the site, and the program simultaneously draws the site map while you work.

Granted, this probably removes the handy “share with others” benefit described in the article, but if you’re main concern is saving time and effort, this is the method I recommend.

]]> By: gordon http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5797 gordon Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5797 After years of trying to create the world’s greatest site map, I’ve found that the excel spreadsheet, all by itself, as displayed in step one – the input tab – does the trick. While lacking some of the visual appeal of a visio diagram, it provides many other benefits:
1. No issues with file formats – every client I’ve worked with has Excel, while only a few have Visio
2. Allows clients to edit the site map or insert comments and questions.
3. Conveys the depth and breadth of a site at a glance.
4. Easily add additional notes, such as references to a requirements document
5. Easy to add other navigation oriented notation, such as footer links versus primary navigation.
6. No space limitations – no more “oh no, my boxes are too big, this won’t fit on a letter sized piece of paper, does our printer have any legal paper?”
7. Major time saver: more time architecting, less time diagramming; allows information architects to focus on information architecture.

]]> By: donnamaurer http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5798 donnamaurer Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5798 Thank you so much for the update. I was reading the old article recently and wondering whether I had the time to figure out for myself how to do this in V2003.

]]> By: cdpapoulias http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5799 cdpapoulias Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5799 I’ve had some success with OpenOffice.org Draw instead of Visio, but the stencil support isn’t there.

]]> By: allen http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5800 allen Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5800 Agree about not using sitemaps much – just get too busy for big sites and then there’s all the exceptions… I put the sectional nav in Excel and flow-chart the exceptions (carts etc). However if I need something really good looking I’ll use GraphViz (PC and Mac) to produce beautiful diagrams for IA from Excel but it is *quite* involved: You have to use the ‘concatenate’ feature to write various pieces of column information into a single cell, then export that to a GraphViz friendly txt format. GraphViz can produce outstanding results but you have to sweat a little. http://www.graphviz.org/

]]> By: audcrane http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5801 audcrane Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5801 Would second the OmniGraffle / OmniOutliner recommendation.

I try to use Excel-only also (per Gordon’s excellent suggestion, especiall WRT the file format problem) but find it breaks down in two places:
• starts to be difficult to read past 2 levels
• doesn’t easily allow for brief page descriptions

Does anyone have an example of Excel-only that does this well?

]]> By: octopus http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5802 octopus Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5802 Great, but what can you do for Omnigraffle Professional?

]]> By: gordon http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5803 gordon Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/the-lazy-ias-guide-to-making-sitemaps/#comment-5803 A few other points. First, I don’t want to take away from the value and power of a visual – I think there’s a need for simplifying the site mapping process, and I definitely want to try out these ideas. I find site maps especially useful in reports and presentations.
One thing I’ve found useful, refering back to the original excel spreadsheet – I like to label “Level 1″ “Level 2″ as “1-Click” and “2-Click”. Even though this doesn’t account for all paths to a page, such as home page call-outs, or for the fact that many people don’t start at the home page, it does make explicit the answer to a question that every client will ask.
Also, I use a lot of columns. So, for example, I’ll have a column for page summary, a column for recommended words of copy, a column for author, etc. Then, when I need to print, depending on the audience, I’ll hide various columns. So, for authors, I’ll focus on the ‘number of words’, ‘author’, etc; whereas for a developer, I’d show a column indicating any modules (if the site is being built on a CMS or other platform). That way, the Excel file serves a lot of purposes. So, if it can feed some visio diagrams too – all the better!

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