pageoneresults - 1:34 pm on May 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

Excellent post ken_b. I like the phrase Sideways Growth. I remember a point many years ago where the mantra was to keep as much as possible at the root level of the site due to difficulties in deep spidering. As the search engines changed and technology took leaps and bounds, that mantra changed. These days it is more effective to properly organize the site into mini-sites. Each section of the site can actually function independently of each other.

These days I have basically one file sitting in the root and that is the index page. Everything else is in sub-directories that directly reflect the core architecture of the site. Within those sub-directories there is plenty of room to plan for Sideways Growth. Once you've established the core navigation and topic areas, growing sideways is a natural occurence.

I now look at my sites as one big <ol> with nested <ol>s 5, 10, 15 levels deep. ;)