[Sigia-l] good examples of tertiary nav. on small content sites

[Michael_Piastro at harte-hanks.com]

I am architecting a small content site, where it is conceivable to place 
every site page in a navigation structure. The issue at hand is whether or 
not to use "index pages" that lead to secondary/tertiary level content 
pages, versus having these pages accessible via some form of navigation. 

The first issue is whether to offer subnav. from the home page via DHTML, 
etc. If we do offer subnav in the main navigation, the need for index 
pages for secondary level pages seems to disappear.

The second issue is how to deal with tertiary level pages - these pages 
typically provide more "in depth" information about the subject the parent 
secondary level page deals with. For example, a secondary level page 
"symptoms of diabetes" might provide information about diabetes symptoms 
to a certain depth, while the tertiary level page "symptoms in depth" 
might provide additional information only hardcore information seekers are 
interested in. This is compounded in that there might be in-depth pages 
for each of the symptoms of diabetes (fatigue, blurred vision, etc.). So 
one secondary level page may have multiple tertiary level children. The 
issue whether I'm struggling with is whether and how to offer tertiary 
level navigation, versus some type of index on the secondary level parent 
with a "back to index" link on the tertiary level page.

Examples? Suggestions?

Michael Piastro
Information Architect
Harte-Hanks