sitemap

also, site map. one of the most confusing words in the world of web site design, because it means too many different things to too many different people, with more people compounding the confusion by making up new meanings for it. there is a potential to differentiate between meanings by spelling one meaning as one word, and another meaning as two words, but no such standard is broadly accepted.

1. in web site design, html, seo, and navigation, n., a web page, usually relatively plain in design, that links to every page on the web site, displaying the links within the structural hierarchy of the site.

2. in web page design and html, correctly known as image map, but frequently called site map instead by n00bs, n., a method of linking different portions of an image to different urls. in some cheaply-designed web sites, an entire web page may be designed into a single image map, so that the entire content of the page, including the text, is presented as an image, rather than as a combination of text and images.

3. in project pre-production, n., an optional design process preliminary to flowcharting, used mostly for multi-page projects, such as web sites.

4. to google, a text or xml file added to the root directory of your web site to let google’s spider know the names and dates of your web site’s searchable files. to differentiate from previous meanings of the word, this upstart definition should be known as, google sitemap. however, other search engines may be following suit.
1. building a sitemap is a time-honored method of helping both visitors and spiders find all your web pages.

2. the reason search engines can’t find your web pages is that you built an image map instead of a sitemap. it looks nice, but neither spiders nor adaptive technology can read it.

3. i hate sitemapping, flowcharting, and storyboarding. if i don’t have a picture of what i’m doing in my head, i can’t put it on paper, and if i do have a picture of it in my head, i’m ready to create web pages, not to mess around with paper.

4. come on google, when a word already has a definition, we don’t need a new definition. if you have a new concept, have enough originality to come up with a new word for it.