No matter how well organized your web is, it's never possible to know at which point of your web Internet users will enter. To see why this is so, just perform a Lycos search yourself on any topic. You'll find that Lycos returns links that point at pages that are right smack in the middle of subwebs. For example, someone might find this page by searching for "footer". You can be sure that people will be entering your subweb in this manner too. Another reason for being unsure of the entry point is that webmasters may add links in their webs to particular pages of interest in your web. So people might be hyperlinking into the middle of your web in this way too. Once all these effects are taken into account, it may turn out that most users who browse your web will enter your web at a random page rather than through the well-prepared home page you worked so hard to look nice!
For this reason, I believe that it is essential that every page contain a footer that contains at the very minimum a link to the home page of its enclosing subweb. You may wish to add other links too, but if you add a hotlink to your home page on every page, you're providing a way for the user to get oriented, regardless of where they entered your web. Other elements that can be added to footers are:
Including all these elements is trivial if you use FunnelWeb to
prepare your web pages. Simply define a macro @
@<End page@>
The footer at the bottom of this page was created in precisely this way. The use of a macro for the page footer also gives you the power to change all the footers in your web just by changing the macro definition and invoking FunnelWeb to regenerate the web.
I have chosen a particular style of footer which I used in all
the pages I create. But really, it's the content of the footer that's
important. So long as you include the right buttons and keep the footer
concise, you can't go too far wrong.
Webmaster: ross@ross.net