Here is a short, sweet, and to the point post from Ryan at Signal vs. Noise on thinking about the architecture of your site in terms of paths instead of hierarchies. What he's saying makes sense. Often, it's easy to get caught up in the overall structure of the site: Where do the publications live? Should the blog be part of news? Should contacts be in the about section, or on its own?

A way to enhance the architecture of the site is to think in terms of paths, Ryan says. How are your users going to get from point A to point B? It's more than where the publications live. How are your users finding the publications? Where are they starting - the home page, an internal page found via search? It's beneficial to understand all the potential paths a user might take to get to your content. Prioritizing these paths will help you think about the most important content. So, when you're in the analysis phase, don't throw out those scenarios. They'll come in handy when you want to develop some paths.

One thing to note is that we shouldn't abandon hierarchies, obviously. It'd be a hard sell to convince the client or site owner that you'll only investigate paths and not hierarchy. A reader of the post made the following comment, "I would have to say though that convincing a site owner to only go down the ‘path’ route would simply give them the impression we were looking for shortcuts. So i think combining both elements of site planning/organisation is advisable."