American Orthodox Institute

Website: www.aoiusa.org

Content heavy sites tend to use cumbersome navigation structures that present the visitor with an overbearing jumble of information that is hard to decipher. It becomes too confusing to figure out how the page is supposed to work and the visitor leaves.

We solved the problem with an intuitive navigational structure: 1) Global indexes are located above the header; 2) local indexes directly below the header; 3) and information of interest behind user selected java dropdowns in the sidebar.

This structure, along with the images and plenty of white space, eliminates the heaviness that accompanies many content heavy sites and makes it very easy for the reader to get his bearings.

The machinery under the hood is even more impressive. Thumbnails are dynamically generated and easily added to any article. While not as easy to operate as our simpler sites, the essential structure remains the same and is easily grasped by someone with even a little experience in Content System Management.

A special consideration was the ability for future expansion. This was designed into the site. Pages are easy to add, and room has been added for the eventual display of video and other multimedia venues.

Reaction to the AOI design has been overwhelmingly positive. We wanted to create a site with a visually pleasing palette and an intuitive navigational structure for the user — a tall order for a content heavy site. For the webmaster, we wanted a site easy to maintain and update.

AOI is hosted with Orthodox Internet Services, the hosting partner of LOGOS Web Services.