Caffeinate Your Hypertext

Notice that each of these items is clickable. Each of these options brings up a listing of the final level of content: articles. Furthermore, hypertext content in Domain Names might show up in a listing of articles in Before You Code. This allows readers to take different paths to reach the same content. Even neater, SitePoint has organized their forums in a hierarchy that's similar to the way they organize their articles. This lets them link to forum posts from article listings.

If SitePoint were a magazine, linking to the forums would be the equivalent of having thirty pages and three hundred page turns. Seeya later, Paper.

Because SitePoint is a collection of loosely connected articles, SitePoint's hierarchy is primarily an index. However, there's no reason you have to design your site that way. In fact, you can often give the user a better experience by making every page in the hierarchy contain useful information. One site I'll mention several times during this article, ExplorePAHistory.com, uses this strategy. The index pages don't feel like indexes because they contain interesting information about PA History.

ExplorePAHistory.com also solves the dangling ends problem experienced by SitePoint and other hierarchial sites. At SitePoint.com, when you finish reading an article, you're at the end. You drill down through the hierarchy, read the article, and that's it. You're at the end of the line. You have to backtrack to find something else.

To solve this, many sites display links with related information. For example, SitePoint article pages autogenerate a list of related articles, books, or forums. ExplorePAHistory does something even smarter. On the last page of an article on the religious history of PA, they include a substitute for the "next page" link: the three magic words "Continue The Story..." This link lets the reader continue to read about the religious history of PA, but it seamlessly moves them onto a new article. True to its name, ExplorePAHistory includes little touches to give readers the impression of exploration. To be successful, this method requires every writer to cooperate.

The Timeline

Many sites organize their content by time. Most of these are blogs. Blogs started out as personal journals online, but now a blog can be almost anything. They share one trait, however: they are organized by date. Many blogs comment on current events or the comments of other blogs. Thus, the time of writing is the most important detail in most blogs. Because blogs must stay current, the front page is the most important page. Archival and later retrieval are less important.

Many blogs provide us with excellent examples of smooth hyperlinks within the flow of language. For many blog writers, writing with the enhanced features of hypertext comes as naturally as writing on a piece of paper. This is a good thing.

Combos: The Hierarchy Timeline

Many news sites use a combination of time and hierarchy. Some readers are interested in reading the latest news. Others are interested in a particular topic, like sports news or international news. For example, the BBC News site shows the latest news (time) as well as a number of news categories (hierarchy). It also has a section cataloging news reports by date.

Once you start to design complicated combinations like the BBC site, editing by hand becomes very difficult. You may need to use a dynamic content management system, but be careful. Pick one that fits your needs; don't be distracted by bells and whistles.

Nifty Site Techniques

Now it's time to look at some unusual site organization. While you may never have content that works with these methods, perhaps these sites will help you think about the awesome potential of hypertext. Perhaps some of the creativity will rub off and find its way into your own site.

Pure Hypertext: Wikis

Although Wikis are often used for knowledgebases and encyclopedia-type sites, they are extremely versatile. Unlike most content management systems, which concentrate on a SitePoint-like hierarchy, Wikis store site data in a loose hypertext database. Wikis are great open-ended systems for taking advantage of the full possibilities of hypertext. Some Wikis go wild and even allow any viewer to edit any page.

The Wiki Wiki Web, the original wiki, is an interesting social hypertext Website. By making it easy for anyone to edit any page, the people at the WikiWikiWeb have put together a fascinating collection of documents. The editors can easily undo any change made to the site, which guards against defacement. The content isn't designed. Instead, it grows because many people collaborate to write all sorts of interesting things. One of these documents is a description of WhyWikiWorks.

Where do you start? One author on the site says, "I consider it a minor success for hyperism that we even ask the question. There are many ways to use these pages and therefore many places to start." The site still offers other types of organization: a Category Page and a recent changes page. WikiWikiWeb content is nearly alive; where else would you find information about The Creativity Goblin, Good Thinking Music or Post-Scarcity in a Technological Society?

Do you want to play games? You can do it on a Wiki.

Many writers collaborate on Wikis. If you enjoy humor writing, you might find the humor on GreenCheese pretty funny. Of course, you never know what will happen to your identity when anyone can edit your personal info.

Some Wikis try a little harder to be organized. Wikipedia manages to provide tons of interesting information. The Wikipedia does the best job I have seen of demonstrating the power Wikis give us to organize our information well. Just reading the Wikipedia is a great lesson in the capabilities of hypertext.

Jorge Louis Borges and Random Order Content

Wikis organize pages by linking the relations of the ideas they contain. Why not make a site that displays content in a random order?

In a long-past literature class, I once read The Book of Sand, by Jorge Louis Borges, a writer who wrote extensively about hypertext without ever knowing about it. In The Book of Sand, a librarian encounters an infinite book. This story helped kick off my interest in writing. Much later, a site about The Book of Sand renewed my interest in studying hypertext.

The Book of Sand, a Hypertext Puzzle, by Maximus Clarke, makes a point about the flow of meaning by mixing up the pages of Borges's story. Instead of displaying the story in order, he presents the pages independently and challenges the reader to guess their order.

If you have a philosophical bent, studying Borges is a good way to start thinking about the possibilities of hypertext without getting bogged down by technology. I highly recommend Clarke's Book of Sands links.