Siteguide: An Example-Based Approach to Web Site Development Assistance

Abstract

We present 'SiteGuide', a tool that helps web designers to decide which information will be included in a new web site and how the information will be organized. SiteGuide takes as input URLs of web sites from the same domain as the site the user wants to create. It automatically searches the pages of these example sites for common topics and common structural features. On the basis of these commonalities it creates a model of the example sites. The model can serve as a starting point for the new web site. Also, it can be used to check whether important elements are missing in a concept version of the new site. Evaluation shows that SiteGuide is able to detect a large part of the common topics in example sites and to present these topics in an understandable form to its users.