This section describes the information hierarchy and how best to develop your content.
Information Hierarchy
A well-defined information hierarchy keeps the website well organized, while providing content creators with more flexibility to link to what's important, independent of the actual level of the content. The absolute hierarchy has been historically determined by the MDF relationships. A few examples of how users may access the pages are:
- From the Home Page, they jump to a Root Page.
- From the Root Page, a link can lead directly to a Category Page or a High-Level Listing Page.
Relative Hierarchy
Pages are designed with a hierarchy based on the order of importance of the information. A few examples of how users may access these pages are:
- From the Home Page, they will jump to a Level 3 page.
- From a Level 3 page, users could follow a link to a Level 4 Page or even directly to a Level 5 page.
- Alternatively, users can be routed directly to a page from an e-mail, promotion, banner, or bookmark and never touch any other page on the site.
Within pages using the Relative Hierarchy, the initial page to which the user is taken is referred to as the Landing Page.
Navigation
Built into the framework, the hi-nav is simplified to better communicate the peer levels and help users navigate deeper into the different sections by moving the child links into the body of the page. This also improves the navigation across peers and parents and improves the visibility of the site's organization. Only Parent and Peer links appear in the Hi-Nav.
For more details, see the Hi-Nav section under Framework.
Page Levels
Understanding the Cisco.com content hierarchy will help you determine where your content should reside. For more information, see the description of the different page levels.
Developing your content
In order to develop your content, it's important to take the time to understand both users' needs and the Cisco business needs so that you can balance the two.
