Website architecture is an approach to the design
and planning of websites which, like architecture itself involves technical, aesthetic
and functional criteria. As in traditional architecture, the focus is properly on
the user and on user requirements. This requires particular attention to web content,
a business plan, usability, interaction design, information architecture and web
design. For effective Search Engine Optimization it is necessary to have an appreciation
of how a single website relates to the World Wide Web.
Since web content planning, design and management come within the scope of design
methods, the traditional Vitruvian aims of Commodity, Firmness and Delight can guide
the architecture of websites, as they do physical architecture and other design
disciplines. Website architecture is coming within the scope of Aesthetics and Critical
Theory and this trend may accelerate with the advent of the Semantic Web and Web
2.0. Both ideas emphasize the structural aspects of information. Structuralism is
an approach to knowledge which has influenced a number of academic disciplines including
aesthetics, critical theory and postmodernism. Web 2.0, because it involves user-generated
content, direct the website architect's attention to the structural aspects of information.
"Website architecture" has the potential to be a term used for the intellectual
discipline of organizing website content. "Web design", by way of contrast, describes
the practical tasks, part-graphic and part-technical, of designing and publishing
a website. The distinction compares to that between the task of editing a newspaper
or magazine and its graphic design and printing. But the link between editorial
and production activities is much closer for web publications than for print publications.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_architecture
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