My Instructional Website according to Chapters 5 and 6

As I'm still struggling with the content of the site (I'm learning something new), I can still make design decisions based on its nature from a top-down perspective. For example, its structural layout/architecture will be linear and its conceptual model will be a tabbed, spiral bound manual (this particular spiral bound notebook is bounded horizontally/landscaped with the tabs at the bottom). Garrett does not like taking conceptual metaphors literally, and I'll heed his warning! I won't incorporate a spiral picture at the top of my page, for example, but it's the tabbed section on the bottom of the page where this metaphor applies. Hopefully, the user won't make a conscious connection between my site and an actual tabbed manual.

Why this metaphor? Because building an interactive photo gallery is step by step process, and I can color code (a wayfinder if you will) the tabs so that the user can easily navigate (and be aware of where they are) to the section that suits his or her level of technical comfort and be able to go back to sections that need to be reviewed. So the "organizing principle" is levels of difficulty/a progression of steps (as one gets further into this project, the difficulty increases). Specifically, this arrangement would be like this: I'll group beginning/1st steps together (web hosting decisions, choosing a database, php basics, creating a webpage template), intermediate skill/middle steps (building the database, incorporating php commands into the template), and advanced/final steps (dynamic acquisition of content/pictures, dynamic creation of new pages, additional options).

Navigationally, the problem will be, "Can I fit all of these options as links on the bottom of the page?" I think so: it'll be a two tiered navigation bar where the higher nodes are placed in one row, and in the row below, the "tabs" will change to the subsections of the higher node. This navigation system will be global in nature, but there's another consideration: linking terms to definitions or examples. In this case, the global navigation will be supplemented by contextual navigation (some or most of these links will also go to external sites). There might also be some local navigation with "next page" and "previous page" links.

As a last note, as far as user error is concerned, the problems will arise from people not being able to identify where they need to "jump in" at (and not providing user feedback). They might select a step further on in the process, like an advanced step, when they actually need to jump to something that's intermediate or beginning!