Web Site Mapping

[Randum]

Ok guys here goes-if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. I am working on making a site map for a really large corporate website and need 2 things. first is I need software that maps the site out by crawling it, so far a few work but its not picking up some image maps/javascript...even though it says it works with javascript...I used some things off download.com and so far POWERMAPPER is the best.

Now for visual representation, any suggestions? I got a few ideas but want to see if anyone has done this before(currently using SMARTDRAW demo I found online), its uncharted territory for me...and apprently, for the website too! lol, ok anyhow, i can be reached via MSN messanger or just post, ill check back every once and a while
(Randum311g@msn.com)

Just brainstorming early on a monday....

 

[Randum]

Looking at visio...anyone good/bad experiences?

 

[jkoon]

Last summer I helped with a large website for the WVU College of Law and needed to create a site map page as you do. I also wanted to create a flowchart of sorts displaying the hierarchy of the various pages.

We found an open source program that would make a basic site map showing the hierarchy but its output was less than ideal for our needs. I cant remember the name of this product though, its been too long ago now (sorry). If it does come to mind later I'll be sure to come back and post it.

Anyways, I tried using visio to make the flowchart type document and while visio is nice, it turned out to not be practical for our site (which had 1,000+ pages). So we scratched the visual hierarchy and as sad as this is ended up hand making a site map page which contained the ?must have? links.

As a couple other brainstorm ideas, you may want to look into ms frontpage, I know it can create some reports and statistics for a website so it might be able to also make what your looking for.

Sorry I?m not much help, but I can say that I like visio but sometimes its just not practical to make a giant chart (espically if you want it to be able to fit on one or two pages). But then again I have not used it very much so maybe I just didn?t know what I was doing, heh.