How do you visualize website structure

[NewBuilder]

How do you visualize a website structure in terms of (categories of) pages and interlinking. I use such visuals for discussing what you are actually doing now and what can be improved. I have made visuals I few times myself (basically making boxes representing categories of pages and lines representing internal links), but I found that I soon ran into a scheme of huge proportions and needed more paper and more time. Appreciate your thoughts!

[ninjamarketer]

I would assume you are referring to site architecture. If this is the case then there are several good tools in market that are used by dev / designers to map out the site artchitecture or sitemaps.

Microsoft visio http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/

Power mapper http://www.powermapper.com/

Smart draw http://www.smartdraw.com/

I have used smart draw for flow charts and found it lot easier to use.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Sameer

[Getz.pro]

Great question. I tend to just map it out by hand categories / sub categories / products/services but I can see how that can get quite daunting on very large sites.

[Getz.pro]

Thanks Sameer, I'll have to check these out

[DonnieCooper]

I second the smartdraw software.

I've been happy with it because you can do several other things with it.

[goodnewscowboy]

Hey Jos: I use a vector based drawing program (CorelDraw) and draw boxes with lines like you. I can highlight main pages by border thickness and colors.

It's probably not nearly as elegant as  Sameer's suggestions, but I've used it for so many years, it's as comfortable as a pair of old jeans

[Dan-Petrovic]

I have used PowerMapper and am relatively happy with it. It fails miserably on large scale websites. I've spent days researching website structure visualistion and found that there are no rubust industry strength solutions out there available to general community. We're in the process of writing our own software for that reason.

[NewBuilder]

Thanks Sameer, I will check these out.

[ninjamarketer]

Sure. Your welcome.

[ninjamarketer]

Great.Thanks

[MontanaFlynn83]

I'll use the mac software omnigraffle to chart out my site.  Also someone came up with a cool applescript that will take a regular xml sitemap and turn it into omnigraffle.

[NicoleMunoz]

Another vote for Smartdraw!

[semvibe]

I use Visio to start with and when I go in to more details in terms of pages, I use https://gomockingbird.com/

This allows me to share the drawings easily.

[MikeTek]

I'm a little late to the party (just trying out the new Q&A for the first time).

I was looking for a solution myself yesterday and found two free ones that, while definitely not as full-featured as those shared by ninjamarketer, might do the trick.

WriteMaps is a nifty tool (free to use) that looks to have some potential.

SlickMap is an HTML/CSS template you can use to add up to three levels of hierarchy, and it looks pretty sharp (though it's clearly not as quick/convenient as some of the other tools).

[elephantseo]

Smart Draw is seriously awesome; just downloaded for a 7 day free trial. I used Mockingbird in the past but SD looking way better now.

[bergman]

I checked out WriteMaps, and it was very very nice for small sites.  It is a pity that it does not seem to be maintained anymore.  Last communication from the creator seems to be from 2009.  

[bergman]

I checked out WriteMaps, and it was very very nice for small sites.  It is a pity that it does not seem to be maintained anymore.  Last communication from the creator seems to be from 2009.  

[MikeTek]

I hadn't noticed that - shame, could have been interesting if they kept up development.

[Lumin]

You might want to check out this link, which works for new versions of Omigraffe.

Let me know what you think.

[NickPateman81]

Apart from everything mentioned already - bubbl.us is a great free online tool that lets you save and export your visualisations.