Hello, my name is Chris Keenan and I operate one of, if not the top US History student resource webpages on the net (http://www.course-notes.org). It has gotten to be quite popular over the past 2 years. I have won a few awards for the site (Hostway's Teens in Technology) and the site has received a lot of publicity because of it (feeds from the pr newswire across a ton of sites - I counted 4 unique online articles, 2 unique inprint articles (Chicago Suntime and Chicago Lerner), and one TV interview on NBC5 Chicago.

However, Im not satisfied with where the site is at now. I plan on expanding it to include multiple subjects as well as make it more community based (where students can go and get their questions answered).

The way the site is designed right now is very poorly to say the least. While the navigation of the site is very easy, it is definately not expansion friendly. This was my first real website and I never expected it to become as popular as it is today so I didn't really plan for the future.

I was thinking a custom CMS integrated to the site as a backend would be appropriate. This would allow the pages (I'll have atleast 800+) to be managed easier, as in I make one change to one file and it would apply to the whole site (i.e. selling text links on the site on a monthly basis, news updates, etc). I would also be able to create/edit/remove pages with a WYSIWYG editor built into the cms.

I would also like all of the different subjects to have unique look through the use of different headers, color schemes etc. The idea is to basically have each page be able to be a standalone site, but still be a part of the larger "family" of pages, if that makes any sense to you. I think a good example of this idea can be found at http://www.monstersandcritics.com/.

I was thinking of having all of the courses incorporated in the headers as links for easy navigation. As well as having links on a left column with slide out menus (whatever the horizontal equivelent of drop down menus is) like this:

When someone hovers over US History, these links would slide out:

Vocabulary
Outlines
Unit Notes
Political Parties
Political Timelines
Court Cases
Biographies
Practice Quizzes
It would be the same idea for the rest of the subjects as well.

This is what I've come up with so far in regards to ideas to the site. Can you think of any other options that I should require?
Thanks in advance.

-Chris Keenan

Chris,

Your site is in my book a top 10 website. It is both a. easy to navigate, and b. extremely redundant (thats not a bad thing) so if a person goes from one page and views something, they know odds are it will look the same when they go on to the next page.

If you are planning on re-doing the website, please remember that those are some of the most important things that peoppe look for (not conciously) in resource websites. They dont want flashy, neato, things... they want simple, easy to find, in and out sort of things.

If you asked me to find something on your website I could probably find it in a matter of seconds. Not because its there and I know where it is, but because I can decifer it's location simply by viewing the links and following the route.

If you are that fed up with the website that you need a change, remember that most viewers interested in resource information aren't interested in how good it looks, they are interested in how good it works. And your site that you have now works my friend.

Forums and Community things can be easily added by inserting another link on the left nav. and poof, your set.

Other than maybe a simple keyword search or something to that effect... I say keep on keeping on with that website. But that's of course IMHO.

Good Luck

right - I definately agree with you on the ease of navigation on the site. Thats like the major thing I did right lol

However, its really time to create a new look because all of these pages are editted manually and if I'm going to be expanding to multiple different subjects, I don't want to be manually editting all 1000+ pages.

Find a good, customizable CMS, and use templates to keep the current layout and navigation.

YEs , i agree , a nice CMS like php-nuke or xoops would make the job for you much easier !