How to Navigate

We created this visual and structural redesign based on comments from web site users and thorough research and development, in order to create a pleasant, professional and useful place for citizens to acquire public information.

The web site can be navigated in three ways:

1). Using the 4 main categories
Information within the City of Victoria website has been subdivided into 4 main categories (represented by the coloured photographs at the top of the page): Residents, Business, City Hall, and Visitors. Clicking on a main category activates a menu containing sub categories that further narrow your search scope; any of these items can be activated to proceed.

A 5th category called "hotlinks" provides easy access to some of the most frequently visited areas of the City of Victoria website.

If necessary, hypertext links (text you can click on to go to a new page) within each page's content will allow progression to information deeper within the site. Unless you override our settings, you will see unvisited and visited links in blue.

The top of the content area is always accompanied by a "breadcrumb trail". This area shows the current page title as well as the title of every page clicked on to reach it, so backing up a step or two is easy.

For example, the Residents' "Flowers & Gardens" page has the following trail:

Leisure > Arts & Culture > Flowers & Gardens

This tells us that we arrived at the current page (Flowers & Gardens) by clicking first on "Leisure" and then "Arts & Culture".

2). Search the site (right-side, of top navigation bar)
Every page contains a search box in the top-right corner. To enter a query, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the "enter" key (or click on the "search" button) for a list of relevant web pages. If too many items are returned, simply refine your search by adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. Our engine in constantly refreshed with the most current information, so if you have trouble finding a specific item, searching for it is often the most efficient.

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