While browsing the article list on my website, a thought occurred to me.
Each series should have its own contents page.
My site includes an “Attendance DX” series about my experience improving attendance-management systems. With a story that runs across many episodes, readers need a clear place to start and a way to follow it in order. Finding the next installment among unrelated articles can take some effort.
So I brought it up with Kimiko-chan, who helps me work on the site. Kimiko-chan is the name I gave ChatGPT.
Wouldn’t a dedicated contents page for each series be useful?
Then I found it.
We had already made one.
I remembered that it ought to exist, so I went looking. That was why I found it.
But someone visiting for the first time would not know it was there. Would they bother searching for something they did not even know existed?
As I put it in our conversation, most people probably would not start looking.
A well-organized contents page cannot help readers if they never notice the way to reach it. This time, I had experienced that problem on my own website.
Kimiko-chan added a “Read a series” section near the top of the article list. Readers could now select a series and go straight to its contents page. Each article in a series also received a link near the top, leading back to that page.
I looked at the actual screen and explained what was difficult to find. Kimiko-chan changed where the links appeared. Then I looked again.
When I saw the updated site, my response was, “That looks great!”
What we needed was a clear route to the contents page we already had.
I am glad we noticed. Even the person whose name was on the website had been hunting for it.
Now let’s hope we never need a contents page explaining where to find the contents page.