[tor-bugs] #21942 [User Experience/Website]: Sitemapping the current site layout

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#21942: Sitemapping the current site layout
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     Reporter:  linda                    |      Owner:  hiro
         Type:  defect                   |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium                   |  Milestone:
    Component:  User Experience/Website  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal                   |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                           |  Parent ID:  #21222
       Points:                           |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                           |
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 = Objective =
 * generate a digraph representation of the current sitemap of
 www.torproject.org.

 We are doing this to visualize how the website is currently laid out,
 analyze the pros and cons of the layout, and to see user paths throughout
 the website.

 = Definitions =
 * a ''sitemap'' is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or
 users, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. It can be a document
 in any form used as a planning tool for Web design.
 * a ''directed graph (or digraph)'' is a graph with a set of vertices
 connected by edges, where the edges have a direction associated with them.

 = Methodology =

 To generate the sitemap digraph, one person (linda) manually visited the
 website and manually wrote the code for generating the visualization. The
 manual crawl began by visiting all the pages reachable with one click from
 the front page, then visiting all the pages reachable with two clicks from
 the front page, and so on. This continued until there were no additional
 pages to visit.

 External pages (any site that wasn't www.torproject.org/stuff, so
 donations.torproject.org would be considered an external link) and
 duplicate paths (if one page was reachable from the header, and also from
 the footer, for instance) were noted along the way.

 There was existing work done to sitemap the website (#10591), and this was
 taken into consideration. The previous work was used to check that there
 were not any sites that were not accounted for, but since the digraphs
 were not generated in the same way (the old method did add nodes for
 external links, whereas this digraph does, for instance), they do not look
 identical.

 = Results =
 * a digraph sitemap of www.torproject.org

 * observations about site structure along the way:
  - 38 links on the front page, which leads to 30+ pages--that's a bit too
 much.
  - 3-4 ways to get to one page (header, footer, inline, from a subpage),
 sometimes with different text ('volunteer' and 'get involved' lead to the
 same page).
  - there are site headers, subheaders, AND side headers, which compete for
 attention.
  - the header, subheader, and footer stay the same throughout the site,
 and are visible everywhere.
  - the side headers sometimes appear, and also are different depending on
 which page you are on
 (https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en vs
 https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en).

 * ideas about structure for the new www.torproject.org
  - keep it simple: nothing more than sub-sub-sub pages (3 clicks away)
  - less is more: reduce the different amount of content on each page, and
 expand on the select few topics that remain on each page.
  - consistency: use the same phrasing to refer to the same pages and
 topics throughout.
  - minimize: use only a header and footer.
  - put things in the footer that are not as important, and link to a leaf
 page. The current footer links to pages linked to by the header, which is
 kind of confusing.
  - organize by target audience: a lot of the existing content can be
 organized into the developer, support, and outreach portals. (for
 instance, the manuals, project pages, wiki, can all be in the developer
 portal.)

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21942>
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