why do so many pages have links to themselves

One thing that irks me

[Ed_Gibbon]

Can anyone think of a reason why so many pages, often at big-name sites, have self-links.

I mean, you are on the homepage of a site, and there is a link or a button that says "home" -- leading you to think that you are not on the homepage -- and if you click it, the very same page you are already looking at reloads.

I would think that just having a link on the page implies that clicking on it causes some other page to be displayed.

Is this stupid, or am I missing something?

[gethan]

If you use generic navigation across an entire site it's easier. But it does mean that some of the links aren't needed.

eg. The same menu is used for every page.

I do it - I guess MS and others do it too :)

Ps. Welcome to WmW

[Eric_Jarvis]

I don't...I use a template to make the original pages...so they all have identical menus when they are first created...then before I add the content I remove the <a href> from the link to the page in question...takes seconds...and if I make changes later with find and replace it is still no problem

with well thought out styles that makes it obvious to the user which page they are on

[physics]

Sure, but if you're using SSI for navigation you only have one file to edit and BAM, the whole site navigation is updated. It may look silly when the page links to itself, the average user won't be bothered IMHO.

Welcome to webmasterworld!

[DrDoc]

I agree with physics .. and with Eric_Jarvis as well ..

Thing is, on a big site it's easier to just have the same navigation for all pages. If it's just a smaller one it's easier to remove the actual anchor tag, but keep the text.

However, I don't really see the problem with having the home link .. I mean, what about pages with frames? Then you always have the same navigation, no matter which page you're currently browsing ..

[Ed_Gibbon]

Frames. Links to the page your're already on is just another reason why (imho) frames are ridiculous and inappriate for most uses.

[tedster]

Is one of you guys Jakob Nielsen in disguise? This is one of his pet peeves - I've seen some major rants from him on the topic.

And yet, I do it myself on big sites, out of the need for efficient work flow. However, I try never to do it on the Home page and other important entry pages. the littlest oddity there can cost you traffic and income.

[bird]

I just recently figured that CSS can defuse the problem a lot with SSI. Every link in the included navigation gets a seperate class, so that you can define a style at the top of each page that makes the link to that page look like normal text.
Yes, technically it is still a link, but at least it doesn't visually invite the click anymore.

[EliteWeb]

I have links to home for the following reasons:

Incase someone follows a link from a framed page.

Part of templated navigations

marketting view, if they click it - it counts as another page view, and more banners being served.

[LeClair]

A way to make an include menue and still not to link to the page itself would be some kind of script/database which gets the path of the page which is related to the link and then just doesn´t output it as a link.

[AlbinoRhyno]

If the user can't already tell they are on the homepage, I don't know what you can do to help them.

Having disappearing links in a nav structure leads to users wondering where they are or how they got there. Let me break out my trusty Krug book,

One of the most crucial items in the persistent navigation is a button or link that takes me to the site's Home page. Having a Home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over... Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug

I'd take Krug over Neilsen anyday.

[LeClair]

Well, I would not remove the text itself but make not-clickable.

[ggrot]

Most pros use some type of SSI system for the common navigation. If you use anything dynamic, like PHP, you can easily just have a script read in a plain text navigation file, parse it for hrefs, and remove the ones where they link to the page being requested. This would still leave the text, but as it was suggested, the text would not be clickable. I think this approach is great.

[Ed_Gibbon]

Having a Home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over... Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug

Sure, a link to the "home" page from every other page, but a link from the home page, to the home page ??? I just don't get it.

As for a user not knowing that he is already on the home page, this has happened to me: I enter a very large site "through the back door", usually via a Search engine that finds some page deep down within the very large site, and I get up to the homepage, but maybe it could be an intro page to some large file full of related pages, and there is a link that says "home" and I click it and viola, the same page loads again.

I maintain that the mere existance of a link always implies that it leads to some page other than what the user is currently viewing. That is, the meaning of "link" is always: "click this and see something else", and not "click this to see the same thing you're already seeing"

[Ed_Gibbon]

Ok. I was just looking at the homepage of this website, and there is a "Webmaster World" button in the upper left corner. And even on the homepage it links to the homepage . . .

But, I guess we could say that it acts as a sort of "refresh" button, since maybe the content changes from hour to hour . . .

So maybe a self-link makes sense for pages that have quickly changing content (and I am not sure if hour to hour is quick enough, maybe it needs to be minute to minute).

But, if the content changes less than once a day, I still say a link from the homepage, to the homepage makes no sense.

[digitalghost]

I don't sweat the small stuff. In most cases, glancing at the URL in the browser address bar lets me know it is the home page.

Having a page reload is no big deal either. I simply can't get worked up about it.

Having a link that works, and takes me to page that is utterly worthless bothers me.

DG

[pat_s]

I'm with digitalhost. I use SSI for navigation so it's the same file throughout most sites. It's simple, easy, to the point. I've never seen the problem with that system and no one has ever complained about it either.

[straysparrow]

I can't say that I get worked up about it either way... But I definitely notice. I like it when navigation bars are adjusted to the page in question so that the home link (or whichever page you happen to be in) doesn`t work. It doesn`t affect whether I will surf a site or not... but it seems to me that it shows that somebody paid attention to the details (which is important to me as a consumer)

[Ed_Gibbon]

I like it when navigation bars are adjusted to the page in question so that the home link (or whichever page you happen to be in) doesn`t work.

That's what I mean. On my own website, the navigation area on the side of each page shows all of the links in the same "category" (it's a website of recipes, so a given chicken recipe has links to all the other chicken recipes), but in that list, the name of the page you are currently viewing is plain text (not a link like all the others).

It took a bit of programming, but I am glad somebody might notice it.

[straysparrow]

glad I could be there for ya Ed :)

[JayCee]

Well, I'm a glutton for punishment (but do only smallish sites).

I not only delete the "a href" for the page you are on, for each and every (non-floating) page on the site, but I also show the user what page they are on by making that nav choice a differrent color and/or putting a little graphic next to it.

It bugs the hell out of me when developers don't care enough about their craft to at least disable a self-link.

"Oh hey it takes extra work!" is not a justification, it's just whinning.

For a big site, build or buy a programatic solution.

I'm an old geezer, and every year I see the quality of people's work product decrease. Most of us complain about shoddy workmanship in the products we buy and use, then turn around and do the very same thing.

What ever happened to pride in doing a good job? How about that old "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right!"?

Sure, this is not a show-stopper, but it is one more way to show visitors and owners that you're a pro and you care about their experience on the site. And anything that CAN confuse visitors has been shown time and again to actually do so.

Unless you have done actual usability testing, or studied same for a site very like yours, you can't honestly say that it doesn't matter to your visitors despite whether you care personally). You're just whistling in the dark. The fact is you just don't know if it bothers a significant number of visitors or not, unless you test.

For text based navigation, I use CSS to define a standard nav line, a sub nav line and one of each for the selected page. For sliced graphics, I make all pages the same and then swap out the graphic for the self page by hand.

As you can tell, Jakob Nielsen is not the only one having this as a pet peeve...

[joshie76]

>>I'd take Krug over Neilsen anyday.

Me too. Though Krug wouldn't have the link necessarily dissapear he'd have it look different, somehow indicating this is where you are. Though maybe not for the homepage. Which, I've just realised, is pretty much what JayCee is saying.

(edited by: joshie76 at 6:23 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2002)

[caine]

the major page referencing link is usually pictures or company or site logo's with a url back to themselves, but i do think it is useful as a reference to where you are, on massive sites, and explains how you got there and how much information may exist from the link being tied into the content of the page in relation to the directory above holding alot more information on other topics associated to the original page request.

[Trisha]

I'm still new here, but I have to say that I disgree with most on this thread. I like all the navigation links to be on each page of a site. I get kind of confused when going through a site and the links change as I go from page to page. Sometimes it is something I see from the corner of my eye, but am still aware that something in the navigation menu has changed.

I use it for more than just clicking on the links too. It serves as sort of mini site organization map, it doesn't make sense to me to have one of the links disappear on each time I go to a different page.

[caine]

Trisha,

there is no problem with your idea, if the site is very shallow, but if your looking at intensive keyword structures to maximise revenues, then sites, get massive and have to be sectioned off. This is called theming.