Making a "Fat Free" Menu

WebMedley's dynamic navigation serves as the main tool for getting around on your Website.  This list of links to each main page is, in some ways, the most important part of your Website (aside from the content, of course).  It is important to keep this menu "clean" and "fat free" while building your site.  Too many links and you may distort the template, as well as overwhelm the visitor with too many options.  The key is to keep the number of main pages to 10 or so.  With around 10 options, you can easily arrange the rest of your pages under one of the 10 category pages that you've designated to be in the dynamic navigation. 

This account has 17 main pages.  As you can see, most of these pages could easily be moved and become subpages of another fellow main page.  With the current list, there are far too many options to choose from.  Also, this many main pages will look very bulky when actually viewing the pages. 

For example, "The contact us" page could remain a main page, but have "Contact the pastor" and "Contact the Trustees" as subpages, reducing the amount by 2.

"Our Music Program" can remain a main page, but have "Children's Music" and "High School Music" as its subpages , reducing the amount by 2 more. 

Finally, the three sports (football, basketball and baseball) could all be moved to become subpages of "Sports Program".

The main idea here is making the main pages just general topics about your website, and their subpages will cover more specific information, or go more in-depth on that specific information.

A good way to think about your Website, is to compare it to a magazine.  A good magazine has a cover which catches you eye, and some "teasers" on the cover that entice you to open it and read more.   Your website should be no different.  Your home page should be attractive and catch the eye of the viewer.  Also the home page should have very general information or have some "teasers" that would make the visitor go into some other pages on your site. 

Inside the magazine, their are different topics or stories which go into more deeply the subject matter of the article.  These would be the subpages on your website.  The subpages are there to contain the main information on each topic that the main page touches on.

As you can see, after some shifting of pages, the account mentioned earlier has 9 main pages which branch into subpages which describe the topic briefly described by the main page.  This will do wonders for the navigation area on this site, the viewer is not overwhelmed by too many different options, and the focus for these pages remains in the content area, as oppose to the oversized navigation area.