10 years ago there was no doubt in most web professionals' minds that an essential stage in creating a website was to sketch out the Information Architecture (IA) using a series of wireframe diagrams. To be honest, I've always disliked making them but back when websites were static and tons of html pages needed to be created for them, it was useful to have a map of how they would all fit together.
Now that web development is so sped up and flexible because of Content Management Systems like Drupal, it seems to me that there are better ways to spend your time than drafting up wireframe diagrams... Recently I stumbled upon a new web service called JumpChart - which is a groovy service in allowing clients to login and create pages & menu items. In fact, I was quite excited when I found it as clients can login to your JumpChart account and essentially build out the core IA of a site, but really fails in only exporting static XHTML files!!!
Ultimately the purpose of planning IA is to let the developer and client get on the same page about the main content and navigation of a site and well, if your client is savvy enough to jump onto a site which may look bare-bones and un-themed, its good to just get them into the site and familiar with making pages and menu links from the getgo.
This is just one of the many reasons why we use killer Open Source Software to build sites - their power and simplicity let us start building a site with our clients and they immediately see how its coming together, within an aesthetic framework that flushes out as we theme the site - overall, much more effective than explaining the difference between IA and design mockups and rebuilding them into a site once we're done in OmniGraffle and Photoshop ;)
