pavlovapete - 4:41 am on Apr 22, 2010 (gmt 0)

Interesting discussion. Please allow me to throw some basic numbers in.

1 homepage, 100 links
- 1 click
100 X 100 = 10,000 pages
- 2 click
10000 X 100 = 1,000,000 pages

1 homepage, 30 links
- 1 click
30 X 30 = 900 pages
- 2 click
900 X 30 = 27,000 pages
- 3 clicks
27,000 X 30 = 810,000 pages

1 homepage, 20 links
- 1 click
20 X 20 = 400
- 2 click
400 X 20 = 8,000
- 3 click
8,000 X 20 = 160,000
- 4 click
160,000 X 20 = 3,200,000

Personally I think 100 links per page is way too many. And in addition to the links to sub-pages we are going to need (probably) an equal number of "related links" which we'll use to pass juice to other pages in the site.

If we use the Theme example, and I understand tedster correctly we won't be cross-linking across the themes.

if we use a range of 20-30 links per page then we are looking at anywhere between 900-160,000 first and second-level "hub" pages (which need sufficient attention to exhibit "highly useful and novel" content)

IMO another relevant issue is "How many users are actually going to be navigating into the content?" 4 clicks is not a lot of effort - but scanning and discarding several hundred links on the way is surely burning a lot of mental calories.
I wonder if search is the primary navigation method used by users to get around, and get to, content in these big sites?