1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Design your web resource 189
presenting training information, particularly where it could
be confusing or even dangerous if someone skipped a
section.
2 The grid – this can be useful where you have a lot of information
within a particular field that shares common characteristics. For
example, if you were building a site about the English Football
Premiership, you might want to list each club and then look at
each club’s facilities, player signings, disciplinary record, etc.
With a grid system, your user could follow each club through all
the club’s pages; or they could cut across the clubs and examine
by category (e.g. look at pages listing the disciplinary record of
each club). You can organize the content of grid-structured sites
with a database. Indeed, databases can be used for any part of
your site where you would put large amounts of searchable
information of a similar nature and composition, such as a
catalogue or staff directory. However, as Rosenfeld and Morville
point out, they can be very expensive and time consuming
to construct and will need the input of a programmer. Do not
undertake them lightly.
3 The hierarchy – as already noted, this is a common structure
for web sites. Lynch and Horton believe it is ‘the best way to
organize most complex bodies of information . . . Hierarchical
diagrams are very familiar in corporate and institutional life,
so most users find this structure easy to understand. A
hierarchical organization also imposes a useful discipline on
your own analytical approach to your content, because hierarchies
are practical only with well-organized material.’ The
depth or flatness of your hierarchy is another issue. If you
have a very flat structure, with one home page leading to a
single secondary level with multiple pages, the menu on your
home page will be extensive, some might say unwieldy and
discouraging. If, instead, you opt for a very deep structure,
with different levels of menu and sub-menus before you arrive
at the content, you risk alienating the user, who may have to
click through too many pages of what are called ‘nested
menus’ to get to what he or she wants. As ever, it is a matter
of balance. Interviewed since writing his book, Louis Rosenfeld
says that user preference is moving towards the flat