Understanding the Web Site Map Template
When you start a drawing based on the Web Site Map template, Visio 2007 adds shapes and tools for automatically creating a diagram of a Web site. The template adds the Generate Site Map command, which runs a crawler (sometimes called a spider or bot)—that is, a type of program that retrieves a Web document and follows all the links in it. Visio’s site map crawler looks specifically for HTML pages on the Internet, an intranet, or in local folders such as a test or staging site. Through this process, Visio 2007 discovers all the pages, documents, graphics and media files, program files, and other information on a Web site and then creates a hierarchical model of what it found.
Visio 2007 not only generates a site map, it also creates a model of your site. Like other model-based templates in Visio Professional 2007, this one offers alternative views of your information and allows you to work with shapes in a different format. In other words, the shapes on the page aren’t the most important part of what’s stored in the drawing file. The diagram on the page shows one view of the model, which might or might not include every link and piece of content. The List and Filter windows show the complete model with everything that Visio 2007 discovered when it crawled through your site, as Figure 15-1 shows.
Figure 15-1. You can choose which options you want to see in the site map by selecting them in the Filter window. The List window displays all your content in a tree view.
Viewing a Site Map
Visio 2007 provides information about your Web site in the way it displays shapes in a site map. Shapes include symbols and colors that indicate broken and duplicate links, as well as other information. Table 15-1 shows you what each symbol means.
| Symbol | What It Means |
|---|---|
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| A chevron sign pointing down beside the shape indicates a link that you can expand. |
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| A chevron sign pointing up on a shape indicates an expanded link. |
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| No symbol on a shape indicates a link that cannot be expanded. |
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| A red X on a shape indicates a broken link. |
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| A dimmed shape indicates a duplicate link. |
Collapsing and Expanding Site Maps
When Visio 2007 initially generates a site map diagram, it displays every link that it discovered. As a result, site maps are typically very wide. To make the site’s structure more apparent, you can collapse and expand branches, or subtrees, of your site as follows:
Collapsing a subtree Right-click a shape that displays a chevron sign pointing up on the bottom edge, and then choose Collapse Hyperlink.
Expanding a subtree Right-click a shape that displays a chevron sign pointing down on the bottom edge, and then choose Expand Hyperlink, as Figure 15-2 shows.
Figure 15-2. If a page includes links to another level of site content, the shape that represents the page includes the Expand Hyperlink command on its shortcut menu.
Viewing a Web Site Model
You can choose how much of your site map you want to see on the drawing page. However, the entire model—all the links that Visio 2007 mapped—always appears in the List and Filter windows, as Figure 15-3 shows.
Figure 15-3. The List and Filter windows display all the content referenced by the links that Visio 2007 found when it created the site map.
The Filter window provides a way to view categories of content in a site map. For example, you can temporarily hide all graphic shapes from the site map by clearing the check mark beside the Graphic option, so that you don’t have to look at every bullet and logo graphic on your site and can more easily see the page hierarchy or other elements. The List window also lets you expand and collapse hierarchical branches of content.
The Web Site Map template opens these windows by default when you start a new drawing. You can also open a window by choosing Web Site Map, Windows, and then choosing a window to display. Visio 2007 docks these windows on the left side of the drawing page, but you can drag them to a new position—for example, with the stencils.
When you work in the List or Filter window, you affect the model of your site map, whereas working on the drawing page with shapes doesn’t necessarily change the model. For example, if you delete a shape on the drawing page, the link that the shape represented still appears in the List and Filter windows—that is, it’s still part of the model—and you can drag it back into the diagram. To delete a link from your model, delete it from the List or Filter window by right-clicking the link, and then choosing Delete. You can map different parts of your site on different pages of a drawing file by dragging a link from the List or Filter window onto a new drawing page. Visio 2007 maps that portion of the site and adds all the links below the one you dragged onto the page.
Note
You can use the List window to quickly display a branch or subtree of your site. For example, you can insert a new page and then drag an item from the List window onto the page. Visio 2007 then diagrams that branch of your site.
Determining What Is Mapped
When you generate a site map, Visio 2007 follows the trail of links contained in HTML and other pages based on file extensions, common communication protocols, and attributes of HTML tags or elements. However, when you generate a site map, you can do the following:
Specify the number of levels of a site to map as well as the number of links on a level to follow
Ignore links to types of content that you don’t want to include
Add a file extension, protocol, or HTML attribute to the list so that Visio 2007 examines links to other types of content
Change the shape used to represent a type of link
A Web site is typically structured with one home page that contains links to branching pages. A level represents one layer of the site’s hierarchy or navigation. For example, a link on the home page might take you to a page on the first level of the site. A link on that page could send you to a page at the second level, and so on, as Figure 15-4 shows. For every level of a site, you can choose the maximum number of links that Visio 2007 will follow before proceeding to map the next level.
Figure 15-4. Visio 2007 regards the navigational structure or hierarchy of a Web site as its levels and can map a site containing up to 12 levels.
By default, a site map includes links to files with any of the extensions shown in Table 15-2.
For details about modifying map settings, see the section titled “Changing Site Mapping Settings” later in this chapter.