How do you make a site without really having to make a layout or a navigation system? Just by having your index or mainpage as the navigation page. This is one of those options that's fallen out of popularity, but shouldn't be forgotten about.
You could make a really simple, easy-to-navigate, usability-oriented and standards-compliant site ever like this:
1. Organize your information into an outline as in the other day's post.
2. Put your outline in as the index page, arranged in columns using CSS so all the information can be on one front page with brief text explanations of the content where appropriate. Either through the subsection headers or a single info paragraph and logo, the purpose of the site is summarized. Each link takes the user to its page, and each page has links to the site index so that incoming users can find the index page.
3. Differentiate between in-site and off-site links.
Benefits:
Users get an immediate look at not only the types of information on the site, and by showing them nested menues all at once, they can understand the depth of detail in each section and don't have to click around as much.
