Table of Contents

1. everything should be accessible from Home Page (or at least via indices): so keep pointsize small; the logicality of the project's layout will help promote and underline the logicality of the essays and accounts the project offers - physical format becomes a simile for intellectual cogency. Because of this interest in simplicity of layout, I now counsel against having separate suites of pages for "general" and "specialist" uses: cf here.
2. the actual design of the ToC is up to your software people, but it might help were it somehow to "unfold" on mouseover. In this fashion, a neat and compact ToC is indeed the whole table of contents for the project, which the user unpacks during perusal; it is also an exact reflection of the structure of the project. Thus a casual user could scan the bare ToC, the deep user accessing additional pages from the same short (and neat) ToC; what is the best technology for achieving this?
3. just where the ToC goes doesn't really matter: the SearchStation setup (at the bottom of the page) is simple and clear: can this be extended to use unfolding menus on mouseover?
4. I should prefer to see the same ToC layout on every HTML page of the project, for cleanliness and consistency;
5. in addition, have a site navigation box at the top of each page, which assures the reader of location within the project: this could be the kind a banner at the top of every page which shows the "ladder", and hotspots the previous upward steps: Britain & the Sea > History > Greenwich > Naval Hospital
6. is a search box feasible? The essays should offer a lot of sophisticated terminology, which it would be useful for readers to be able to find from the Home Page. Also have a search button alongside the ToC repeated on every page?
7. point sizes: trying to cram too much onto the Home Page is probably a problem: perhaps indicate to the user that the pointsize displayed by the browser can easily be varied?

"An idea of a classical, timeless home page and overall design"

1. simplicity: the simpler the design, the easier it will be to maintain, update, improve - and move easily on to the second stage;
2. no tricks: a majority of web pages use all the tricks of the trade to catch the attention rather like a circus sideshow. This can be noisy, distracting and - very important - take a long time to read, and to find what one wants. So keep graphics on Home Page to a minimum: otherwise unsettling, distracting, fugitive, lightweight, confusing. Too many web pages simply play around with graphics to approximate a video arcade: we need the timeless quality of a high-grade book - where graphics are sparingly used! Our design will never be out of fashion, because it does not pander to the ghee-whiz-bang brigade;
3. don't risk annoying the user: again, keep it simple if possible, with no long-loading java applets, plugins, etc: a user should always know what the result of a click should be, e.g.:
4. warn the user: users always to be warned when the result of a click will take them into network- or machine-intensive graphics. Consider offering large images in at least two resolutions to cope with network/machine limitations;
5. thumbnails: graphics throughout the project to be small and of regular dimensions, with decision to enlarge always in the user's hands; that is, the project takes on the air of a flexible and extensible book, with the emphasis always on the word unless the user chooses otherwise.
6. graphics only where essential: I am very much against the sloppy notion that A picture is worth a thousand words. Not so. One picture might be worth anything, ditto one word - so we deal in both media where they can offer the greater impact; but we do not make the mistake of using images where we should use text - or vice versa!
7. logo? perhaps identify with NMM logo, and project logo WHAT??, but small, and neither animated; might one/both of these be in the form of watermarks on the pages?
8. colours: off-white or cream or light ochre background, with in-depth pages identified by a deeper colour: see here;
9. pointsize: small and regular pointsize, consistent across all pages; use only the fonts that all the common browsers can display automatically;
10. essay graphics: once again, these should all be of regular thumbnail size, preferably consistently labelled. The only elegant way I have found to do this is to encapsulate the thumbnail, and database fields in a table, with the thumbnail clickable for the larger image behind. [I have a perl script which uses tags to extract records from a flat-file, one-record-per-line database, and unite them with thumbnails - but it probably only works under UNIX; and might be more trouble than it is worth to get going on a PC.]
11. frames? unless force majeure, I suggest we keep off frames, the use of which would make the project more difficult to update and enlarge.
12. an example of the kind of setup I like is the National Gallery of Art in Washington - consistent, cool, clear, uncluttered layout. We probably can't use their frame-like layout with the index in the left margin, because we will have too many items - unless the menus could unfold somehow. Furthermore, their site map provides a bog-simple way of searching the pith of every page - so do we need one, perhaps? This could easily be another way into the list of essays;

For the suggested design of pages underneath the Home Page, see here.