Getting back to structure

Back in April, the Web Steering Committee devoted a meeting to brainstorming about the structure of our new website. As explained in a blog post called Building a solid structure, we worked on structure for three areas: main navigation, one sub-navigation area (About JIBC) and utilities (buttons like Contact Us).

We’ve been fine-tuning that work and expanding the structure to include navigation for each department. Now we’re ready to start meeting with JIBC departments on structure. Beginning June 22, Communications & Marketing staff (Krista Lambert, Lori Bodin and Chris Wong) will meet with staff from departments to go over structure for their areas. These meetings will contribute to a detailed site map showing overall navigation for our new website. After the work on structure is complete, the next step will be preparing content for pages.

Building a solid structure

Today’s Web Steering Committee meeting was all about structure. Specifically, the committee started working on the structure, or site map, for the new JIBC website. We focused on three important areas:

• Main navigation: This is the set of buttons - running across the top of the website – that link to the site’s main sections, such as About JIBC and Programs & Courses.
• Utilities: This is a different set of buttons that link to pages such as Contact Us and Maps & Directions. Utilities are typically displayed in the upper right hand corner of a site, like they are on the Sheridan site.
• Sub-navigation: We looked at the sub-navigation of only one area: About JIBC.

Working in two groups, we wrote names of pages on sticky notes and arranged the stickies on a large sheet of paper to represent the site structure. There was lively discussion and debate about what pages should be included, how they should be labelled, and what order they should appear in.

This is just the beginning of work on structure; we will expand, tweak and fine-tune the structure in the coming months. But the committee’s work has provided a solid base for moving forward, particularly with the all-important task of organizing and preparing content for the site.