Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - orphan pages

The fifth usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) might sound a bit odd today and it is true that this mistake is not very common any more, though you still can find it every now and then: orphan pages, or web pages that don't tell what web site they belong to and don't provide links to home page or other pages on the same site. Often orphan pages force the users either to use the Back-button to return to previous page, shorten the URL to access home page that way or just type other URL and leave such badly designed web site as soon as possible. Nowadays most web sites provide information what web site they belong to and maybe even provide some visual clues about web site structure with structured menus or breadcrumbs as navigational aids, so orphan pages are not such a big problem as they were back in the beginning of World Wide Web. But keep this mistake in mind because now only a n00b web designer would make such a usability mistake that was a bit passé even back in 1996! Remember, l33t web designers use navigational aids to make the navigation in their web sites very easy for the users!