Hi all,

We have a site that has several issues with maintaining content. (I believe this is a publishing site at the root, but I'm not 100% on the whole thing, but I'm the only person here who knows a tiny bit about SP, so I'm now the "guru"... be gentle)

Often areas "rename" themselves and/or their subsections to better reflect the tasks and services they offer.

our SP site is setup with the following architecture (each named item is a NEW site)

root site
--branches
-- -- branch1
-- -- -- section1
-- -- -- section2
-- -- branch2
-- -- -- section1
-- -- -- section2
-- -- branch3
-- -- -- section1

The primary purpose of "Branches" is to provide a sitemap - which nicely shows this heirachy because it tags every site.

However many of the users don't know or don't USE "Branch#" for anything other than a place holder for the information in sections - ie another empty site, with navigation links to the subsites.

What I wonder is:

1. if branch1 is renamed to "Branch Numero Uno" the URL remains branch1 - is there a best practice involved in naming these things more abstractly so that this doesn't become misleading over time - eg: I have a branch called "QA" which is now called Tooling - long story - but the URL is still "/sp01/branches/qa" which is very confusing, but changing would require changest to a LOT of work instructions and other doco?
2. is there a better way than sites and subsites for storing "section info" but still allowing these things to show up on some kind of sitemap?
3. is there a recomended guideline for when to create a site vs other approach/process?

My users are VERY confused about the benfits of sharepoint and many of these sites are nothing more than the templated site with a "info about this section" on the home page and empty default lists and calendards and libraries...

Hi noJedi,

As I understand, you have some questions about site structure and navigation in SharePoint 2013.

1. If you want to change the URL of the sub site, you could go to the sub site->site setting->go to Title, description, and logo->change the URL of the site.

2. You could use library and create different folders for the different section information. For more detailed information, you could refer to the articles below.

The article below is about planning document libraries in SharePoint 2013.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262215.aspx

The article below is about top 10 Best Practices for Document Libraries.

http://sharepointpromag.com/sharepoint-administration/top-10-best-practices-document-libraries

3. You could plan the sub sites according to your business problems and the scale and structure of your organization.

For more detailed information, you could refer to the article below.

The article below is about planning sites and site collections in SharePoint 2013

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263267.aspx

If you want to know the information about the site template, you could refer to the article below.

The article below is about overview of sites and site collections in SharePoint 2013.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262410.aspx

More references:

The article below is about SharePoint 2013. It has listed many articles about the sharepoint.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303422.aspx

The article below is about SharePoint 2013 - Introduction, Features, and Roles.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/527628/SharePoint-Introduction-Features-and-Roles

Best regards,

Sara Fan