Navigation logic / concept ideas

Hi,

I am redesigning my boys website. Anyway, I have a little concept / logic problem and am looking for thoughts.

I have a layout of section menu on the left, dynamic sub menu on the right and content in the middle.

The main sections are:

• Main
• My News
• My Pics
• Extras
• Site
• Pics Archives
• News Archives

So the problem is with my news and my pics respectively. Because these get updated at least monthly, I was thinking that when you clicked on the section link, it would take you to the latest page. As a user, would you find it confusing to go straight to content instead of, say, a welcoming page saying how navigation worked? All the other sections go to sort of introduction page, but the news and pics go straight to the bone.

The archives will go to an introduction and a list of years available, then a list of months, then finally the article or gallery.

So, any thoughts?

Another things, I was going to do my links like so: pics.php?gallery=2004,January instead of pics.php?gallery=2004&month=January.
Any thoughts on that? I don't really want to use mod-rewrite

Any ideas welcome
Thanks