Chapter 5: All About Routes

Understanding how Content Analyzer sets main and alternate routes in the map is critical to your site management work. In fact, you can decide how to set routes in your map, and whether to display alternate routes at all. You can also set routes one way when you first create a map, then change them later. This chapter takes a closer look at main and alternate routes and some of the things you can do with them:

• Main and alternate routes described Once you know the difference between a main and alternate route, you'll know why Content Analyzer makes a distinction between the two. Differentiating between main and alternate routes lets you see how your site is organized and how users navigate through it.

• Choose the way routes are set Content Analyzer can use several strategies to determine which are main and which are alternate routes. The option you choose when you first map a site establishes the way the routes are set, but you can reset the routes later to view the map differently.

• Manipulate alternate routes You can show alternate routes as either link icons or object icons. You can switch back and forth between the two, depending on whether you're interested in the relationships of objects in the hierarchy or in the types of resources in the site. You can also decide whether you want to allow alternate routes to be expandable or not.

Topics in this chapter:

What are Main and Alternate Routes?

Resetting the Routes

Different Ways to Set Routes

Taking a Shortcut to the Main Route

Changing How Alternate Routes are Displayed in the Tree View

Allowing or Disabling Expansion of Alternate Routes

What are Main and Alternate Routes?

A WebMap contains main and alternate routes. No matter how it's built, the map depicts one and only one main route for each resource--shown in black if it's on the home site, or blue if it's offsite. If a resource is referenced again, it appears in green. Since there's no limit to the number of pages that can point to the same resource, there might be many alternate routes to that resource.

When you're surfing the Web, there are often many hyperlinks throughout the site that allow you to jump to the same page. Our term for these multiple jumping-off places is alternate routes, and they're displayed in green in the map.

You can set routes in a WebMap in various ways, as described in "Different Ways to Set Routes." To reset the routes, see "Resetting the Routes."

Main and alternate routes 

Resetting the Routes

When you first create a map, Content Analyzer makes an initial decision about which routes are "main" and which are "alternate" in a map; you can change that decision. For instance, you can let Content Analyzer set routes in your map according to the order in which links are discovered in the site, rather than by the URL hierarchy (the default). Or, if you've imported usage data, you can build the map structure around those pages that are "hit" the most often, to emphasize the busiest route(s) through your site. For details on each different route-setting method, see "Different Ways to Set Routes."

To change the routes

1. Choose Set Routes from the Mapping menu. The Set Routes dialog box appears.

2. Click one of the two buttons, depending on how you want to set the routes. Click URL Hierarchy if you want to set routes by URL hierarchy, and click Usage Data if you want to set routes by usage data (hit counts).

3. Click OK.

Different Ways to Set Routes

When you first create a new map with the File|New command, you decide how you want Content Analyzer to create the map: according to the URL hierarchy (the default), or in a "breadth-first" manner. By default, the Set Routes by URL Hierarchy checkbox is selected.

Later, after you've created the map, you can set routes according to usage data you've imported (if you have imported usage data) or by URL hierarchy (using the Mapping|Set Routes command).

The topics that follow describe the various ways routes can be set in a WebMap.

Setting Routes by URL Hierarchy

When Content Analyzer sets map routes by URL hierarchy, pages appear as main-route objects in the map according to their relative position in the site root path. This organizes your map according to the way your site is actually structured, not according to the order in which links are discovered on pages.

For example, if your site is at www.mysite.com, the map hierarchy is built according to the way URLs are linked off this domain. The first-level, main-route children of www.mysite.com are only those subdirectories immediately off the site root. If there are any links on the site's home page that point to a place deeper in the site--for instance, *www.mysite.com/products/widget*--they appear in the map as main-route children of the /products area of the site (and as alternate routes off the site's home page).

Suppose that one level down in your site, there are branches at www.mysite.com/products and www.mysite.com/corporate. When Content Analyzer builds the map according to the URL hierarchy, it first maps the home page, www.mysite.com/index.html. It then maps any objects that are also at the site root level of the site.

Once those objects are mapped, Content Analyzer moves on to the /products and /corporate branches, mapping all objects in those branches as first-level children of the home page. It then maps objects at the next level down from /products and /corporate--that is, the grandchildren of the home page. It continues exploring objects in this way until the entire map is built.

Note If there's a "tie" for a parent in the directory hierarchy, a default page (index.htm, default.htm, welcome.htm) always wins. Also, a non-default page can never be the parent of a default page in the same directory.

If there are any links in one area of the site to objects in another area--say, from the /products branch to the /corporate branch, those links appear as main-route children of the /corporate branch, not the page that contains the link (they are alternate routes off that page). For example, say /products/widgets.html contains a link to a page whose URL is /corporate/execstaff.html. Assume also that /corporate/index.html contains a link to execstaff.html. The execstaff page will be a main-route child of www.mysite.com/corporate, and an alternate-route child of *www.mysite.com/products.* 

Note that if you're using any aliases in your URLs, the URL hierarchy is not necessarily the same as your site's directory hierarchy on disk. For instance, you may have a CGI Bin directory that is actually on disk at www.mysite.com/cgi/myscripts. But if the URL to this directory is aliased as www.mysite.com/cgi-bin, Content Analyzer considers any files in /cgi/myscripts to be located at *www.mysite.com/cgi-bin*--that is, children of the home page, not children of /cgi.

Contrast this route-setting method to the breadth-first method described in "Setting Routes Breadth-first (Shortest Main Route)."

Setting Routes Breadth-first (Shortest Main Route)

If you deselect the Set Routes by URL Hierarchy checkbox, the first time Content Analyzer discovers a particular page or other resource during exploration, the corresponding map object is displayed with a black label (or blue if it's an offsite object). This is a "first-come, first mapped" strategy. So, no matter where links on the home page point to, they're shown as first-level main routes.

Content Analyzer first looks up all links on the home page, then the hyperlinks on those pages, and so on, working down through the site one level at a time. It makes no decisions about whether a particular link might be more important (or "main") as a child of a different page. For instance, home pages often contain links that point to many different areas of the site. There might be a link to a page buried deep in the site. Yet when you look at the WebMap, that link is shown as a first-level child of the home page, very high in the site structure.

Using the example from the previous section, if Content Analyzer first encounters a link to www.mysite.com/corporate/execstaff.html on www.mysite.com/products/index.html, the execstaff page is shown as a main-route child of /products/index.html. If Content Analyzer then encounters a link to execstaff on www/microsoft.com/corporate/index.html--that is, on its parent page in the hierarchy--execstaff is shown as an alternate-route child.

You'll want to let Content Analyzer set routes breadth-first if you are most interested in seeing objects mapped as they're discovered, regardless of where they are in the site hierarchy.

Warning You can only set routes breadth-first when you first create a map. If you've already built the map and set routes by URL hierarchy, you can't change the existing map's structure to breadth-first; you have to build the map again from scratch.

Setting Routes by Usage Data (Hit Counts)

You can set routes so that the busiest links in your site are shown as main routes in the map. When you set routes by usage data, Content Analyzer looks at all the pages pointing to each object, and makes the busiest link to the object the object's parent page (and thus the main route).

Note that this option is relevant only if you've imported usage data into your map; see "Importing Usage Data" in Chapter 8, "Site Management Tips & Techniques," for details. Note also that the busiest links between objects in your site are shown with magenta lines in the Cyberbolic view.

Continuing the example of the previous two sections, suppose there is a page with the URL www.mysite.com/products/whizbang.html. There are three pages that point to whizbang: the site's home page (index.html), /corporate/newstuff.html, and /products/productline.html. Of these three InLinks, the link on the home page has received the most hits. When you set routes by usage data, Content Analyzer makes whizbang a main-route child of the home page, even though whizbang's actual position in the URL hierarchy is further down in the site (under /products).

Setting Routes Individually

Once you've set routes in your map according to one of the methods mentioned in the previous three sections, you can fine-tune the map's structure by changing particular alternate routes into main routes, one at a time.

To do so, right-click an alternate route (shown in green) that you think should be a main route and then choose Make Main Route from the right-click menu. This swaps the main route and alternate route for that object.

Taking a Shortcut to the Main Route

If you've selected an alternate route somewhere in the map, you can quickly jump to the corresponding main route by selecting Go to Main Route from the Mapping menu or from the right-click menu. This shortcut is especially useful if the display options are set up so that alternate routes are not expandable, and you've arrived at an alternate route that you'd like to explore further--just jump to the main route and keep going. See "Showing or Hiding All Alternate Routes" in Chapter 3, "Creating and Customizing WebMaps," for information on setting display options for alternate routes.

Changing How Alternate Routes are Displayed in the Tree View

By changing the display options, you can switch between showing alternate routes with link icons (the default) or with object icons (link icons are only available in the Tree view). Link icons let you quickly see where a hyperlink points in the map hierarchy: within the same page, higher in the hierarchy, lower in the hierarchy, or on the same level in the hierarchy. For example, this icon represents a link that points to an object higher in the hierarchy than the page containing the hyperlink:

On the other hand, when you show alternate routes with object icons, you get a better look at which resources are available in your site. (You can still tell which objects are alternate routes because they are green. See "Object and Route Label Colors" in Chapter 2, "Anatomy of a WebMap.") For instance, if there is more than one hyperlink to a particular image, you can see at a glance what pages contain those hyperlinks, and thus get an idea of why the image is referred to so often.

Note that only alternate routes can be displayed with link icons. Main-route objects are always depicted with their object icons. For instance, the main route to an image will always show the Mona Lisa icon.

The alternate route icons use arrows to show the hierarchical relationship between the page where the link originates and the object the link points to. The following map shows several of the link icons you might see.

Link icons give you information about the site's structure

You might notice that many of the "up-links" point back to the site's home page or back to a topic introduction page (instead of to different information in the site). These types of links are purely navigational. If you're publishing the map, and you're going to include alternate routes in the published version, you might want to hide up-links to the home page; otherwise, your published map might be too cluttered.

You can select a page in the map and use the Link Info window (View|Object Links) to see the alternate links originating on that page. They're shown in green, just like in the map.

Links on the selected page, with alternate routes shown in green

To change how alternate routes are displayed

1. Choose Display Options from the View menu or click the Display Options button on the Main toolbar. The Display Options dialog box appears.

2. In the Display As section of the Tree tab, select the Link Icons radio button, and then click OK.

For information on setting the other options in the Display Options dialog box, see "Showing or Hiding Types of Objects" in Chapter 3, "Creating and Customizing WebMaps."

Link Icons

The following table shows the link icons that you might see in a WebMap. For more information on link icons and alternate routes, see "What are Main and Alternate Routes?," and "Changing How Alternate Routes are Displayed in the Tree View."

Allowing or Disabling Expansion of Alternate Routes

By default, only pages that are on the main route are expandable. This keeps your map more compact, and prevents you from going around in circles (by expanding the hierarchy under the same object multiple times).

On the other hand, you may want to allow expansion of alternate routes if you like to use the map in much the same way as you browse: following hyperlinks around the site as the mood strikes you, even if those links are buried deep within the site.

In this map, alternate routes are expandable 

To allow expansion of alternate routes

1. Choose Display Options from the View menu, or click the Display Options button on the Main toolbar. The Display Options dialog box appears.

2. In the Show Alternate Routes area (in either tab), select Allow Expansion.

3. Click OK. Any pages shown in green that have child objects (that is, any pages that contain hyperlinks) now have a plus or minus icon next to them.

To save time, the Expand Branch command doesn't expand alternate routes; it could take a long time to expand multiple instances of the same object. The only way to expand alternate routes is to click individual plus icons.

Link Icons and Expandable Alternate Routes

If you set up the display options so that alternate routes are expandable (Tree view only), the children of an expanded alternate route mirror what you would see if you were to expand the main route. If the main-route object has children that are also main-route objects, those children appear under the expanded alternate route with a special hierarchical link icon (an empty chain link with no arrows).

Main-route link icons under an expanded alternate route