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Navigating Bill James Online
Follow the hyperlink menu system wherever you want to go, or...
There are, or there is going to be at some point, tens or hundreds of thousands of pages of material in this site. The question is, how do we set up the site so that the reader can navigate those pages quickly and effectively, while remaining in control of the process?
Here’s my idea. Each page has a “number” or “code” that will take you right to that page. The page number for my most recent article, for example, is always going to be James01001. The page number for my most recent column is always James 02001. The second most recent article is James01002. James01003 for the third most recent article. Etc.
In the Statistics area—which, by volume, is the largest area of the site and will be where many or most people spend much of their time—we assign ever player one OR MORE five-letter codes. Let’s say we have 60 profiles or 60 charts about Jim Thome. His code name happens to be his exact last name, Thome. Each chart has a code number. Jim Thome’s Hitting Profile happens to be 01. RBI Analysis is 04. The year follows the profile code. So, instead of following menus, if you want to jump straight to Jim Thome’s hitting profile for 2006, you can put Thome0106 into the site search or the Quick Jump box and go there immediately. Lance Berkman’s code is LBerk. To get his RBI Analysis for 2005, that’s LBerk0405.
The Page Codes always appear at the top right part of the page in large letters. Let’s say that the new reader wants to find Paul Konerko’s RBI profile for 2007. The new user doesn’t know how to find that, so he gets there through a series of screens/steps—
Statistics (click hyperlink)
RBI Analysis (click hyperlink)
Type Player’s name: Konerko
Select Season 2006
Click Go
Once he does that, it goes to the screen, which says on it, in large letters at the top PKone0406. The 04 is RBI Analysis and the 06 is 2006.
After a while the reader knows that Joe Crede is Crede, that Jim Thome is Thome, that David Ortiz is BPapi, that Manny Ramirez is Manny, Paul Konerko is PKone, etc., and after a while he knows that the RBI profile is number 04, the Performance as Leadoff Man profile is number 10, etc... thus he learns to navigate the site easily by typing the page number into the Quick Jump or Site Search boxes.
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