Site Navigation.

Summitlake.com grows a little larger and more complex every year. Navigation has really become easier, so we're scrapping our old "Site Map" page. In its place, we're offering this simplified, illustrated, 5-step guide to help you find any page out of over 800 on this site.

Overview: Organization by Department

Summitlake.com pages consist of an index ("Home") page, and several assorted categories of subindex pages. We call our subindex pages "Departments". Departments include Commentary, Computers, Astronomy, Humor, Miscellany, Outdoors, Recipes, La Parola, Photos and Writing.

Under each Department may be found numerous articles, essays, photo postings, recipes or other features relevant to the Department's topic or theme. These may number from a few articles to hundreds.

Some of the larger departments may be further broken down by subtopic. The Writing department offers sublistings for stories, poems and Bear stories, for example.

Root Level: Pages that apply to all departments

The "root level" of any computer directory tree means the highest level. "About" pages, copyright and credits notices, and author's profile are examples of pages that are found at the top root level of Summitlake.com. Note that these pages are generally only accessed from the home index page, or, in some cases, from the blue CoolMenus navigation bar.

Navigation Devices

Below, we list the five most common ways you can navigate easily around this site.

1. CoolMenus - Root, Department and Page levels

This nifty navigation aid appears nearly everywhere on the site. Hovering your mouse over a heading title reveals the drop-down submenus. Submenus with an arrow contain more submenus.

Pages on their own do not have CoolMenus. They must generally be viewed from within a Department to be displayed and used. Pages viewed within the Department "frame" give the illusion that the page has the CoolMenus navigation bar, but actually it is a property of the Department index construction. Jumping via a link directly to another page usually causes it to be viewed "standalone", or as a new window -- unless you are browsing from within a department AutoList menu (5).

2. Index Root Directory listing - Root Level

Here is a picture of the "root level" page listing, found only on our Index (Home) page. The listing contains notices, lists, articles and features that do not really belong just to any one department. All these pages reside at the same "level" as the home index page. Hence, they can't be "seen" at any other Department level, unless we have some reason to supply a manual link to them. This list gives you the fastest view of "front page" offerings, including which were most recently added. We used to update this automatically, every time the page loaded, but on dialup, or when the server is slow, it caused excessive load times. We refresh it manually when we need to make a change to it.

3. At A Glance - Root Level

Here is a picture of our "At A Glance" listing, also found only on our Index (Home) Page. It's also a really fast picture of what's new. Here you can tell instantly when we last updated any of the listed major Departments or most popular pages. The date at the very bottom is the "newest" date of all of the dates listed above it. This feature is updated automatically and instantly every time we post a change to any page or department shown. For example: "Bug List" is a page. Date shown is the date the page file was last modified. "Commentary" is a Department. Date shown is the date any page within the whole Department was last modified.

4. Flash Buttons - Root and Department Level

You will find these buttons (and other styles) almost everywhere on this site. They serve the same purpose as a hyperlink. Whether done in Flash, "glass button" icons, or text links, they all serve the same purpose. Often, we use them to draw attention to non-page features you won't find in any index, such as CHAT, Forums, utility programs, or other indexes!

5. AutoList Menus and the Department Level

AutoList is one of the most important and easy-to-use nav features of the whole site. Whenever we post a new page to any department, its listing and hyperlink is automatically displayed in the left menu of the Department "frame". Note that the site-wide CoolMenus navigation bar is also available within the Departments.

5A. WordPress department index pages

Most of our departments have been converted to WordPress index pages, complete with links to feature articles. Newer articles of modest length are usually written within the WordPress framework. Major new feature articles, and a 10-year archive of all older articles, are written in the traditional HTML format.

See our Computers Index for an example of a WordPress index page.

To index the entire HTML article archive, click the "blue glass" Index button on the WordPress index page. (Try it):

5B. HTML department index pages

Offered within almost every department, AutoList generates links for every department level page, every subdepartment (Bear Stories, Writing, Letters, Poems, etc) and the pages for those subdepartments. Major multi-page articles also get their own folders and listings ("Metaprocess", "ABear and the River").

Clicking a page link lets you browse the page within the Department frame, so that you do not ever really "leave" the Department or its AutoList menu. This way you can quickly scan many pages or the whole collection without leaving the Department frame of reference.

An individual page displayed this way usually also has hyperlinks embedded in the article text. Clicking that hyperlink may cause the linked page to appear in a "new window", which is the preferred way. (continued)

Sometimes, the linked page will replace the page you were viewing. This is fine if the page you are now viewing is also Summitlake.com's, but, if Yahoo's, viewing somebody else's site from within one's own site is a no-no. We now try to link all pages to the "outside world" in new browser windows, but some of our older pages do not do that yet.

Postscript: Standalone Pages - Pages Without Departments or Menus

Once you've begun to appreciate and get used to the Department page organization, you'll click one of our page links that is already in a new browser window. Or, you'll find one page on our site from an external link, perhaps from a friend, or Google. First-time visitors viewing a single page may never be aware of all the features our site offers, unless they explore the links on that page.

What happened to CoolMenus and the supporting Department format, and how do you get back to it?

• If your browser created a new window for you to view the new page, the best way to dismiss it is click the "close box". The old page is right there, underneath.
• Try your "back" button
• Try other links that may be on the page, such as on the header or footer.
• If you click any "Summitlake.com" banner at the top of any page, it should take you back to our Index (Home) Page. Try it on the sample below.

last updated July 6, 2006