Home » Technology » Website Creation » Creating a site map and search

Creating a site map and search

© Dianne Reuby

This is one of the questions my site visitors ask most often - how do I create a site map? The method you choose will depend on the size and complexity of your web site.

A small site, with only one or two "layers", is easy to map yourself. By layers, I mean the the number of levels of pages and sub-pages you have on your site. As an example, a home page may link to page one. Page one may have links a sub-page, giving three layers or levels in all.

This would be easy to map yourself, by creating a web page, and using the LIST tag to show a bulleted list of links to each page of the site.

Here's an example:

• Pets




• Dogs


• Cats


• Fish

Here's the HTML code for that example:

• Pets




• Dogs


• Cats


• Fish

If your site has many pages, has a complicated structure, or is going to change often, an automated system will be easier.

I've used FreeFind on my sites to provide both a site map and a site search for visitors to use - http://www.freefind.com/ A similar service is offered by http://www.crawl-it.de and at http://www.fusionbot.com/ though I haven't tried these myself.

Once you've signed up for one of these services, they will guide you through creating your site search and map. Once you've completed the design and customization, you can then generate the HTML code to add to your web pages. HTML code for a site search will need to be added to all pages that you want to be searchable; your site map code will be on a new page which will be uploaded to your web site. Customizing your site map page to match the rest of your web site should be done if possible - then your visitors will know that they're still on your site.

A handy "extra" from FreeFind (I don't know if the other services provide this) is a weekly and monthly email telling me what my visitors have searched for. This helps me to tailor my site to their needs, and also gives me material for my ezines. I choose two or three popular searches, and provide information and links on those topics.

The copyright of the article Creating a site map and search in Website Creation is owned by . Permission to republish Creating a site map and search in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.