Improving 2IA.org Top Navigation and Page Briefs

Full report

On this page

Executive summary

2IA already has a serious editorial stance, a recognizable voice, and a clearer public-interest mission than many early-stage rights sites. The live site exposes six primary navigation items, a sitewide search overlay, an archive taxonomy, a methodology page, and a broad set of utility/trust pages. But the primary navigation is still trust-heavy and discovery-light: users can easily find governance pages, yet they do not get equally clear top-level routes for Issues, Research, Resources, or a future Organizations directory. Meanwhile, several pages reuse near-identical trust language and footer blocks, which makes different pages feel more repetitive than distinctive.

The recommended default top navigation for 2IA is:

Start Here · Issues · Research · Resources · Organizations · Methodology · About · Support

Use the wordmark/logo as the Home link, keep search as a persistent icon or utility control, and move Privacy Policy, Contact, Lawful Contact, Newsletter, Volunteer, Corrections and Right of Reply, and Public Records and FOIA into the secondary navigation/footer and into contextual modules on relevant pages. This gives 2IA a structure that is easier for first-time readers, journalists, and researchers to understand while preserving the trust architecture it already does better than most comparable sites.

This recommendation also aligns with the strongest patterns used by official comparator sites. EFF foregrounds Issues, Our Work, Take Action, Tools, and Donate; the ACLU foregrounds About, Issues, Our Work, News, and Take Action/Give; EPIC emphasizes a deep Issues taxonomy plus a digital-library model; Freedom of the Press Foundation combines reporting, tools, a tracker, training, action, and donations; Open Rights Group separates campaigns, news, blog, research, and membership; and Bellingcat clearly splits investigations, resources, workshops, and donations. 2IA’s own internal reports point in the same direction, arguing for durable layers of trust pages, issue hubs, guides/toolkits, investigations, and a dedicated Organizations vertical with stable profile URLs.

Research basis and design criteria

This report is based on four inputs: the live 2IA site as it appeared on May 17, 2026; the uploaded 2IA research reports supplied in this conversation; official documentation from WordPress and Google Search Central; and official/public pages from comparator organizations. Site analytics, Search Console data, internal search logs, and formal user-testing results are unspecified in public sources. That matters, because 2IA’s own privacy page states that the theme does not add analytics, tracking pixels, or unnecessary cookies by default, so these recommendations necessarily rely on observed information architecture and comparator logic rather than conversion-rate data.

The current site is stronger than a simple brochure. The homepage already frames 2IA as “independent public-intelligence research,” links users toward Start Here and Methodology, exposes a browser-local “Who Cares” routing tool, and introduces core issue areas such as surveillance, OSINT, anonymity, influence, and civil-liberties design questions. The Research Archive also already describes publication lanes for issue hubs, investigations, policy analyses, guides, toolkits, case studies, campaigns, and updates, which is a far richer editorial model than the primary navigation currently signals.

The main structural problem is therefore not lack of seriousness. It is mismatch. The header still emphasizes broad trust pages, while the body and archive imply a much more developed editorial ecosystem. Start Here currently presents a dense wall of dossier cards; Support, Privacy Policy, Contact, Newsletter, Volunteer, and Corrections all repeat a very similar “Proudly Civil-Libertarian / Civic operating standard” block and an almost identical footer-navigation pattern. That repetition weakens page distinctiveness and makes it harder for each URL to answer a specific user question quickly.

Official comparator sites suggest a more user-intent-driven model. The ACLU routes users through issues, work, news, and action. EFF explicitly separates issues, work, action, and tools. EPIC combines a deep issue taxonomy with a digital-library/publications structure. Freedom of the Press Foundation distinguishes reporting, software, a tracker database, and digital-security education. Open Rights Group cleanly separates campaigns, research, news, blog, and membership. Bellingcat is especially relevant to 2IA’s audience because it splits Investigations, Resources, and Workshops, and supports multiple language editions. Access Now complements this with a strong resources/help model for at-risk users.

Two implementation constraints also shape the recommendation. First, WordPress is a good fit for this job: official documentation confirms that block themes support full-site editing, reusable templates, and patterns, while WordPress internationalization guidance emphasizes coding strings so translators can localize the theme without changing source code. Second, Google’s documentation favors simple URL structures, clear site names, breadcrumbs, and structured data, which is relevant because Google currently shows a stale or inconsistent search-result title for the 2ia.org domain even though a direct open resolves to the live 2IA site. That site-name/title mismatch should be treated as an urgent metadata and indexing cleanup task.

Navigation models compared

The options below are judged against the live 2IA header, the site’s existing archive taxonomy, and the way comparator organizations separate issues, research/work, resources/tools, and action/support.

The hybrid model is the strongest default because it borrows the right things from each comparator without copying any one site wholesale: EFF’s issue/tool/action separation, ACLU’s issue-to-action logic, EPIC’s issue taxonomy and library depth, Freedom of the Press Foundation’s reporting-plus-tools mix, Open Rights Group’s clean segmentation, and Bellingcat’s investigations/resources split. It also matches 2IA’s own internal strategy documents, which already call for four durable content layers and a dedicated Organizations vertical.

Recommended default navigation

The recommended primary navigation should be ordered to reflect how mixed audiences actually arrive: first they need orientation, then topic discovery, then current reporting, then practical help, then a differentiating directory layer, then trust/governance, then institutional context, and finally a support path. Home should be handled by the site wordmark/logo, not by consuming a scarce header slot. The search control should stay persistent because the site already has a briefing-search overlay and a research/archive mentality that benefits from search-led navigation.

A practical desktop rule is: seven text links plus one button-style CTA. If header space becomes too tight, the safest page to demote from the primary nav is About, moving it into the utility bar while keeping Methodology in the main header. That preserves trust while protecting discovery and utility.

The secondary navigation/footer should carry: Public Records and FOIA, Corrections and Right of Reply, Newsletter, Volunteer, Contact, Lawful Contact, and Privacy Policy. Those pages are important, but they answer narrower questions and work best as contextual modules from relevant pages rather than as co-equal primary navigation items. For example, Public Records belongs inside Resources and in issue-hub sidebars, while Corrections belongs in Research and Methodology.

One more navigation change is worth making immediately: rename the primary label Research Archive to Research. The archive page already describes a living system of investigations, guides, toolkits, analyses, and updates; “Research” is easier to scan, easier to translate, and less internal-sounding. If the route changes, Google’s guidance on site moves and simple URL structures supports using clear mappings and redirects rather than leaving legacy labels in place indefinitely.

Page briefs and template matrix

The architecture below assumes WordPress block templates and reusable patterns, not hard-coded one-off layouts. It also assumes translation-ready strings, short labels, and modular sections that can be reused across language versions. That is consistent with WordPress documentation on block themes, templates, patterns, and internationalization, and with the multilingual or multilingual-adjacent approaches visible on Bellingcat, Access Now, and EFF’s major resource surfaces.

2IA’s internal research also supports this shift. Its reports argue for four durable content layers, a dedicated Organizations vertical, and more practical utility around search/filtering, provenance, multilingual support, and reusable resources instead of slogan-heavy pages alone.

Page architecture and metadata

CTAs, SEO themes, and priority tasks

A few of these tasks deserve special emphasis. The Organizations page is not an optional extra; it is the highest-value differentiator repeatedly identified in 2IA’s internal research. And the Resources page is equally important because OSINT- and public-intelligence-oriented audiences consistently want searchable, practical, provenance-aware workflows rather than a site made only of topical essays.

Official examples reinforce the same point. EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense is built around basics, tool guides, further learning, and scenarios; FOIA.gov provides a clear “how to make a request” guide and a wizard; Freedom of the Press Foundation combines training, tools, and a tracker database; and Bellingcat surfaces resources and a toolkit alongside investigations. 2IA should adopt the clarity and modularity of those structures while remaining explicitly non-operational and lawful.

Implementation roadmap

The first priority is not volume. It is navigation clarity and SEO hygiene. Before a major content push, 2IA should correct its site-name/title inconsistency in search, simplify URLs where needed, define the new primary and secondary navigation, and build the reusable templates and patterns that future content will use. Google’s documentation on site names, title links, breadcrumbs, structured data, sitemaps, URL structure, and site moves provides the technical framework for that cleanup, while WordPress’s block-theme and pattern system provides the most practical implementation path.

The second priority is to turn the new header into pages that actually deserve their slot. That means rewriting Start Here, launching Issues and Research as clearer discovery surfaces, building Resources into a practical toolkit/library, and only then fully surfacing Organizations after a verified seed set exists. Because 2IA’s privacy posture is one of its strongest distinguishing traits, any newsletter, donation, help, or directory tooling should be reviewed the way the site’s own privacy page demands: purpose, consent, retention, access, deletion, and opt-out should be explicit before launch.

A concise priority stack for the next six months is:

gantt
    title 2IA Navigation and Page-Brief Implementation Roadmap
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat  %b %Y

    section Strategy and hygiene
    Finalize IA, labels, redirects, and nav rules      :a1, 2026-05-18, 21d
    Fix site name/title mismatch and metadata cleanup   :a2, after a1, 21d
    Define taxonomy, breadcrumbs, and sitemap updates   :a3, after a1, 21d

    section Template build
    Build WordPress patterns and page templates         :b1, 2026-06-08, 28d
    Configure search, filter, and archive components    :b2, after b1, 21d
    Prepare translation-ready strings and language UX   :b3, after b1, 21d

    section Core page rewrites
    Rewrite Start Here, Methodology, About, Support     :c1, 2026-07-01, 28d
    Launch Issues landing and child-hub cards           :c2, after c1, 21d
    Rename Research Archive to Research and improve UX  :c3, after c1, 21d

    section Utility expansion
    Build Resources hub, glossary, and downloadables    :d1, 2026-08-01, 28d
    Add FOIA packs, FAQs, and contextual CTA modules    :d2, after d1, 21d

    section Directory launch
    Build Organizations landing page and schema         :e1, 2026-09-01, 21d
    Seed verified profiles and filtering                :e2, after e1, 28d
    Add corrections/update workflow for listings        :e3, after e1, 21d

    section Optimization
    Translation rollout for priority pages              :f1, 2026-10-01, 28d
    Structured data QA and rich-result testing          :f2, after f1, 14d
    Iterate based on observed usage and corrections     :f3, after f2, 21d

If this roadmap is followed in order, the result should be a site whose top navigation actually reflects what 2IA is best positioned to become: a lawful, authoritative, public-intelligence publication with a clear issue map, a useful research archive, practical civic resources, a differentiated organizations directory, and a trust model that is visible rather than merely asserted.