Navigation Hints and Site Map
The HistoricElizabethCity site currently consists of over 500 pages. While every attempt has been made to follow menu-based navigation conventions that are both intuitive and familiar to most people, a few words about navigation may be in order.
Because of the relatively large number of pages, the site has been laid out in a hierarchical structure. The structure at present is 7 items wide and 6 items deep. The structure can be represented as an indented table of contents. Entries in the table of contents are links to the corresponding pages. Some readers may prefer using the table of contents, rather than the menus, to get around the site. If you decide to use the table of contents to navigate, remember to use your browser's back button to return to the table of contents when you're ready to move on from the page you're viewing. There are at present no shortcuts to the table of contents.
Most people will probably prefer to use the menus to navigate. At the top and bottom of most pages, just below the heading and just above the footer, are navigation bars. There are at present two different styles of navigation bars - text-based and graphical. The graphical navbars feature pop-up submenus. On most pages, the navigation bars link to other pages on the same level in the hierarchy, under the same parent, as the current page (these can be referred to as “sibling” pages). Since the home page by definition has no sibling pages, however, the menus at the top and bottom of the home page link to each of the home page's first-level subordinate pages (these can be referred to as “child” pages).
Some pages contain graphical navigation icons other than the navbar. The most common are the up-arrow (which takes you to the “parent” page, and the forward-arrow (which takes you to the next section of the document).
On pages other than the home page, links to child pages are found embedded in the body of the page, or in lists toward the bottom of the page. Also, in text-based navbars, links to the parent page appear along with the sibling links, but the link to the parent is always in italics.
So - to summarize:
When you want to go up to the current page's parent, you select the menu option in italics from a text-based navbar, or the up-arrow icon above a graphical navbar.
When you want go across to one of the current page's siblings, you select one of the non-italicized menu options in a text-based navbar, or one of the menu or submenu items from a graphical navbar.
And when you want to go down to one of the current page's children, you select one of the menu options from the body of the page or from the list (or lists) embedded in the page.
If an any time you get lost and want to go back home to start over (without retyping the URL in your browser's address window), just follow the italicized menu options or up-arrows back up to the top.
As a further navigational aid, site search facilities have been provided for you. Because of size limitations, each of the four major sections of the site must be searched separately. A search page that accesses all the search engines for the site has been provided.
With the help of the table of contents, the indices (street address, resource name), and the site search facilities, everyone should be able to find what they're looking for (or at least determine that what they're looking for isn't on the site) with both confidence and convenience.
