Some website designers like to use “breadcrumbs.”

WHAT ARE BREADCRUMBS?

That term refers to the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel & Gretel, hoping to follow it back out of the woods if they became lost.

Online, “breadcrumbs” are a string of links showing your website visitor the previous pages (at your website) that he or she visited.

EXAMPLE

Let’s say that your visitor arrived at your website featuring tin foil hats, and began reading an article, “Kinds of foil.”  From there, she read your article, “Alien technology,” and then, “Shielding your bedroom.”

The breadcrumb trail would look like this:

Kinds of tin foil > Alien technology > Shielding your bedroom

And, all of those would be links so your visitor could find her way back to re-read the first article, if she wanted to.

PLUGINS

As of April 2008, there is one WordPress plugin that’s recommended for creating breadcrumbs, called Breadcrumb NavXT.  Here’s the link: http://mtekk.weblogs.us/code/breadcrumb-navxt/

I haven’t tried it, but it’s already been updated through WordPress 2.5 (that’s a good sign) and I’ve heard some good things about it.

CAVEAT?

In most cases, if you try a plugin and it’s a disaster, you can simply disable it.

If a plugin causes WordPress to fail, freeze, or behave badly, just to into your FTP program and delete the plugin from your plugins folder.

Generally, you can’t go too far wrong with any plugin that is popular and updated regularly.

Breadcrumbs can help your website visitor find his or her way around your site.  Breadcrumbs may also improve your search engine rankings.

I’m not using this plugin on my sites (yet) because I rely on the Sitemap to help visitors navigate the site.

However, I may consider breadcrumbs for some of my more eclectic sites that can be confusing to a new visitor.