Displaying current location "breadcrumb trail"

Unable to find how to do it

[djf]

Hello there,

I'd like to show a visitor where they are on my own site (still under construction locally at the moment). The sort of thing I'm looking for is:

You are here: Home > Next page > another page > another page

Apologies if this has already been covered somewhere, but I've not been able to find it.

I've only just joined but I've already learned quite a bit, especially about SEO. Boy is it more complex than I ever imagined. I've done a site for a small construction company but after reading the stuff on SEO I'll have to do a lot of rework on it.

Thanks

[EliteWeb]

I always have hardcoded that into the html ;) each page its own.

[keyplyr]

Welcome djf

One way would be to link a site map to each page and use vlink colors for the crumbs. This link could also be presented in a JavaScript pop-up window for convienance.

"site map" may be a stop word so it may be better to use an alternate term.

Another way may be to use a JavaScript menu that presents a page hierarchy. You may find something here:

http://www.simplythebest.net/info/dhtml_menus.html

[Lisa]

Well, you could create a linklist in a database and have every page indexed in that database. Then you could transverse the link list to generate that navigation display.

[Marshall]

djf,

Like EliteWeb, I always hardcode it. Even dynamic pages are unique so I never saw a need for a dynamic trail. Make sense?

[SilverElise]

I was thinking about trying to do this dynamically for my new site.

The idea I came up with was to have a breadcrumb.txt file in each directory with the name of that node in it. The webpage breadcrumb text is then generated by a cgi script which navigates up the hierarchy printing out the contents of the breadcrumb.txt files until it doesnt find one. Then you just add on the name of the current page to the breadcrumb text and voila!

I have no experience of PERL but I'm sure this must be possible.

Any thoughts?

[maccas]

I use this perl script on one of my sites [alug.org...]

[keyplyr]

That's a great script maccas, thanks for posting that.

[djf]

Wow, I'm impressed! So much feedback in so little time. Thanks everyone, though I'm feeling a little stupid for not thinking of hand-coding. I'll probably go for that as I intend to keep the structure fixed (assuming I plan it properly in the first place) and Perl/Javascript are something I'm going to play about with once I get the site up and running.

Thanks again,

[tedster]

One thing to consider - breadcrumb trail navigation does not need to be perfectly parallel to your directory structure. Instead you can tailor it to present the clearest possible navigation cues to your users.

If you look at this very page - the trail at top does not mimic the directory structure you see in the URL. Instead, it has extra entries which help the user form a better mental model of how the INFORMATION is structured.

So, Information Architecture and data structure are not necessarily the same thing.

(edited by: tedster at 1:34 am (utc) on April 2, 2002)

[djf]

Thanks for that extra angle Tedster. It has given me something else to work with.

Oh well, I'd love to hang around and learn more but I've just watched my team win a big game and, due to the necessary celebration, my fingers are difficult to control.

Thanks everyone,

[TeddyBare69]

Would having this link path dynamicaly generated help in the link count for search engines? I am guessing since this would create more links to internal pages that it would help?

[tedster]

It sure could help - and help to get a more complete crawl. Often the things that really help your human visitors also help your non-human visitors. It's good when that happens!