Welcome!

[apautler]

I know it is crucial to map out a website before beginning to design it. In the past I have just used an illustrator document and used boxes to map out the different pages/organization of the site. I am about to begin a project on a pretty complex and many-paged website and was wondering how other designers map out their site that is maybe more organized and easy to manage than an Illustrator document. Is there any good, free software to use that works well?

[seventeen]

Just grab some graph paper and a pencil. Then lightly sketch (so you can go back and erase) out the layouts for each page template that you'll need to make. You can try out a few different things and visualize it in front of you before you start writing your markup. This saves a lot of time for me as I'm not incredibly fluent with illustrator. Just try to set up some sort of scale: #px per each square on your paper.

[falkencreative]

Assuming you are just wanting to show the relationship between pages (like a site map) you may want to look at http://writemaps.com/. I've used it in the past. Free, easy to use, and a lot faster than creating everything by hand in Illustrator. If you want to share the site map (with your client, for example) it'll give you easy ways to do that, through XML or a direct link.

[Parallax]

Great link, Falken. Thanks!

[falkencreative]

Great link, Falken. Thanks!

I believe I heard about the site originally on the Boagworld podcast. The site is well put together and definitely saves me a significant amount of time for complicated sitemaps.

[apautler]

Thanks for the help! writemaps.com is exactly what I was looking for!

[Zim]

i use felt pens, paper & cellotape.