Luigi said:
I wonder how useful a sitemap is on a website...
Some users prefer a well-organized site map to a site's "regular"
navigational scheme: at least this is feedback I've received.
whether it should contain the links to all the pages of the site,
even if they are many, if I should provide a link to the map on
every page
Unless the site is fairly small (< 50 pages), I'd not be inclined to
list every page in the map. Maps (of any sort) exist so people can
locate things of interest quickly. Part of the challenge in making a
map is to include enough detail so people can do that, without
including so much detail that they get lost or overwhelmed.
Think of a site map like an extended table of contents. For instance,
some technical books have a basic table of contents which is just a
listing of chapters, followed by a more detailed TOC which lists
subsections in each chapter. I think a site map should strive to be
like a detailed TOC. It doesn't have to list every page, but it should
get visitors close enough to any information on your site that they
can get the rest of the way themselves.
On a side-note, which might be similar to what you're trying to do: I
have a large number of images (in addition to hundreds of other pages)
on one of my sites, carefully cataloged and indexed. I don't list
every image, or even every section in the site map: I just have a link
to the "image library". Once they get there, there is kind of a "sub
map" there that they can use to explore further.
List 700-800 images in a site map doesn't make sense: listing
groupings of them might. Similarly for properties: listing every
property probably doesn't make sense, but listing regions of
properties might.
, whether a sitemap also helps search engines...
Probably, though I'm inclined to make things easier for humans, not
'puters.
and whether it is easier to make such a one after creating a
database.
My intuition is that, unless you are dealing with a very large number
of categories or sections, that the overhead of creating a logical
database schema will be far higher than just writing a page of links.
