Other (Really Important) Conventions (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web)

0.5. Other (Really Important) Conventions

In this book, we talk about web sites. Not web pages, not home pages. Web sites.

Why are we so hung up on this term?

Because a great wrong has been committed, and it's time to right it. You see, somewhere, sometime way back in early Web pre-history when the terminology of the Web first got started, someone decided that home pages were cool.

So, the people who were creating content for the Web began thinking of their output as pages. Discrete, singular. Stand-alone. Sure, these pages were linked to other pages, but the emphasis was placed on the page as the ultimate product.

The Web is magical. It allows us to link together so many things in ways never before possible. It is fantastic that an image of Shakespeare can link to a page that provides a short biography of the great Bard, which can, in turn, link to another page that opens us up to the fascinating history of Elizabethan England. And so on.

The whole of those pages and their links is much greater than the sum of the parts. That whole is what we call a web site.

Thinking in terms of web pages or home pages too easily limits your field of vision to the trees and not the forest. The goal of this book is to help you master web architecture so that you can design wonderful forests. So from here on, think in terms of sites first and foremost. If we slip into incorrect usage, please email us your flames.[1]

[1]Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville can be flamed at lou@argus-inc.com and morville@argus-inc.com, respectively.

We also should clarify that we use the term web site to include sites available via the Internet, intranets, and extranets. We hope you'll find this book useful regardless of what type of web site you are developing.