web terminology

website vs webpages?

[IPfreely]

hey there,
this may be a stupid question but it's bothering me-
lets say you have a site called somesite.com. on www.somesite.com there is a link pointing to www.somesite.com/bigevent/

bigevent's index page looks nothing like index on somesite.com and has it's own about & products links etc..
is bigevent called "the bigevent's webpage", or "the bigevent's website"?

thanks for the thoughts,
- IPfreely

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why i'm asking this: i just got a job at a company that has a website with no uniformity. every link you click on takes you to a page that looks nothing like the other pages. when people at my company request updates to pages they never use the proper terminology so i have begun correcting them. the company is divided into several feifdoms, each of which has hired web guys in the past to build pages for them.

i have started to tell them that there is only **1** website.
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[Shannon Moore]

I look at each individual document (HTML file, PHP-generated page, etc.) as a "web page" -- a page on the web. "Web sites" to me are a unified set of web pages -- as few as two, as many as thousands or tens of thousands.

What you describe sounds like a typical corporate Intranet/portal site where there's really one "web site" (the company's Intranet) but dozens or even thousands of separate entities (departments, units, affiliated companies/vendors/etc.) all of whom have a little piece of 'real estate' on the company's web server(s).

An immature Intranet/portal site has no overall, unifying look and feel whereas a more mature, centralized one will have a set of standards for design, content and so forth that all the individual entities must (or, in practice, should... there are always exceptions, it seems) follow.

Another way to look at it is all the disparate pages are "sub-sites" of the primary website. Surely they're all related in some way -- eg. pertain to some aspect of a particular company, line of business or similar.

Does this help at all?

[jdMorgan]

A Web site is made up of Web pages.

If you link to another page, and it's part of your own domain, then you'd link to that Web page.

If you link to another domain, not under your control, and you link to their "main" page, then you could say that you are linking to their Web site. If you deep-link -- that is, link to a page deeper in their site below their home page, then you still might say you're linking to their Web page, but you'll probably want to include their domain or corporate name to make it clear that a visitor clicking on that link will be leaving your company's site.

Further, if you are concerned about search engine rankings, you should consider putting the product or service in the link text, rather than or in addition to the company name. This can help the other site's ranking for that term, and can help your site too if you share a common "theme" with the other site.

For example, if you are a widget retailer, and the link points to a distributor or wholesaler that you buy products from, then including "widget" in the link text helps both sites. So use something like <a href="http://www.example.com/widgets.html">widget supplier</a> or <a href="http://www.example.com/widgets.html">Widgets by Example Company</a> instead of <a href="http://www.example.com/widgets.html">Example Corporation</a>.

As to the inconsistency of "look and feel" of your corporate site, it may be time to define some templates for other groups to use -- a "framework" for each group that lets them put their information into it for presentation in a clear consistent manner, giving the whole site a consistent look and feel.

The technology is fairly simple, but inter-departmental politics may be the greatest challenge. You will have to enlist the support of a senior member of management to "drive" the project, and to do that, you'll need to convince him or her of the contributions of consistent look and feel and consistent navigation to better efficiency and professionalism. It's fairly obvious that consistent placement and function of navigation makes things easier to find on a site, and that a consisten look makes the site appear more professional, but you'll have to show how this applies to your company and site.

Jim

[Shannon Moore]

For some "ammunition" to support the reasons why a consistent look and feel (this includes navigation) is good for the bottom line, you might want to start reading about "content mangement [google.com]".

[IPfreely]

thank you for your thoughts
so when refering to the somesite.com/bigevent/ i'd say:
"go to the bigevent's starting/first page, not bigevent's homepage, or bigevent's site, because the term "homepage" refers to the www.somesite.com's index page, and site refers to the overall www.somesite.com.
does that sound right? or can homepage also refer to somesite.com/bigevent/'s index page? thoughts?

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Shannon, yes i really have to start using consistant language and set standards if i am to get through to these people and convince them there is only 1 website.

jdMorgan that was a great insight! recently i've started using more text links help with page rankings, but never thought of it that way, thanks for the tip :) fortunately i have the full cooperation of the CEO and she fully agrees that we need a consistant look.

Shannon a CM is exactly what i just started looking into. i haven't found a solution that fit my needs yet - hope i don't have to bake my own solution...

thanks again
-IPfreely

[IPfreely]

while reading Information Architecture by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville they used the term "subsite" while laying down the terminology to be used throughout the book. well there you have it folks:
www.somesite.com/bigevent/ = a subsite.

so i'll just say "go to the subsite bigevent's index page.

i feel better now :D