Finding Your Way Around This Site

This page is part of a series on navigating this site.

On this page you’ll find help with finding stuff on this site.

WALT DISNEY WORLD RESOURCES FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

This site was designed so that first time visitors to Walt Disney World could build a great trip from looking at and following the instructions on just one page–the home page.

The home page also has links for building a trip if any of the instructions can’t be followed, and the promise of the site is to rank order your next best choices, to make planning easy, fast, and sound.

First time visitors may also benefit from looking at How to Use this Site.

DISNEY WORLD RESOURCES BY TOPIC

Another way to get into broad topics such as Where to Stay or When to Go is to use the links on the left side.

The left side links in red contain the core advice for the topic.

The links under the red links–especially the ones titled (More)–present all the key pages on the site on that topic.

GETTING INFO ON SPECIFIC DISNEY WORLD ISSUES AND QUESTIONS

If you want to learn more about specific items like the Dining Plan, FASTPASSSES, current discounts, the Wilderness Lodge, etc, the fastest way to get to them is to use the search box in the top right.

Just type in what you want to learn about and hit search.

Some other resources for specifics include the FAQ page and the Site Map.

BROWSING AROUND AND SEEING WHAT’S AVAILABLE ON THE SITE

The best way to get a full sense of the scope of the site is to look at the Site Map.

I build most of the Site Map by hand (the category section at the end is automatic) and do not include all of the more than 900 pages of material on this site–but it’s still the most comprehensive guide to the specifics of the site.

The (More) pages in the left side links are also a good way to see what’s available by topic.

SOME OTHER DISNEY WORLD TOPICS

Some material doesn’t fit well into the basic architecture from its cross-cutting or family specific nature. Clicking these links will get you to special sections:

• Military Families
• Large Families
• Families on a Tight Budget
• Families Looking for the Most Comfortable Trip

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WAYFINDING ON THE SITE

Frequent visitors to the site will note that over the last 6 months I’ve simplified the site navigation.

The site used to have three lines of links at the very top, twice as many links on the left side, twice as many links at the bottom, and a whole blog-style navigation (with a different architecture!) on the right side.

This was in addition to the top and bottom navigation that each core page typically has!

I put all these links in because I didn’t want visitors to miss what I saw as key information, and because I can’t predict in advance what leads people to come to the site. (Visitors have come using more than 140,000 different searches topic!)

However, I got strong advice from people I trust to cut and simplify the navigation.

It was potentially overwhelming to first time visitors–defeating the purpose of the site of making first trips to Disney World as simple to plan as they can be–and repeat visitors would possibly lose the forest for the trees.

The fix for first-time visitors was to ruthlessly cut navigation. I may have not cut enough…the list of Top Ten pages on the left side may be unnecessary…

Key to the fix for returning visitors was developing the (More) links on the left side. These pages are currently ugly, but pretty comprehensive.

My next step is to hire a WordPress developer* to create context sensitive sidebars.

When this is done, when you are on a page related to “When to Go,” then the navigation will show many of the links currently in the More on When to Go page. This will allow me to cut a lot of the navigation that’s at the bottom of pages.

There’s some plug-ins that try to do this, but all the ones I’ve tried have led to inconsistent results…so I’ll have to hire somebody…

I’d love to hear your navigation suggestions–use the comment form below!

*The site is built on a WordPress platform, which allows a technical idiot like me to keep it going…