A few words about the work I'm doing for the reorganization.
We're in the process of evaluating the Web site's usability. I already have some improvements in mind that I hope will help the site's navigability significantly. The main problem, as I see it, is the abstraction of our content from its subject matter. Most of what's on the site is presented individually with little connection to it's subject matter. I want to be change that.
There are two items on which we're working in the meantime. One, a document detailing how to use the AAAS search to find content. Two, site- and page-level surveys to find out why people are visiting the site and if they are finding the content they are seeking. The decision to prioritize these items was made by the Web Oversight Committee. The survey is pretty self-explanatory, but based on past experience I do not think we'll get the level of participation needed to guide us. The search help, on the other hand, is more in response to user complaints. While our content is not easily navigable, the new AAAS search is more than capable of helping a user find useful information. Our near-term goal while we work on making or content more navigable is to try and direct people to the search. While I'd rather address the site's shortcomings directly, this will likely prove to be at least somewhat helpful in the meantime.
In preparation for the more fundamental changes to the Web site's structure and navigation I've spent the last four days moving files (and ensuring that no links were broken in the process). I've eliminated some of the directories and consolidated a lot of the files into fewer locations. One of the problems with the current structure is that files are not grouped logically. I've tried to remove extraneous structure that didn't provide any additional value. There's still some more work to do in this area, but the updates should be smaller and more related to navigational modifications.
In regards to these structural changes, I've come to at least one conclusion ... Dreamweaver should not be used to manage a large site consisting of thousands of files. The process has been painful with regular program crashes, connectivity losses (even after changing to file sharing from FTP), and long delays as DW tries to determine what links are affected by a file move. I don't think it would have been a problem if I was working with a few files here and there, but we're talking thousands of files. I probably should have moved the files in small groups ... for some reason thoughts like that always come to me too late to be of use.
I've seen posts from Macromedia personnel stating that for large sites a server-oriented solution would be better than using DW for templating and file management. Unfortunately I'd have to agree.
It'd probably be a good idea to look into using more includes and such to simplify the link cache, but this has problems of its own. I'll have to consider what options we have as I work on restructuring the site over the next few months.
(I guess I should mention that changing to a file share for the remote site does improve the transfer process considerably. DW still has occassional connectivity problems, however, when a large number of files are being moved.)
