best way to connect multiple network switches

The "cascade" (s1 -> s2 -> s3....) should be avoided.
In this case failure of a device in the middle will disable all devices down the line.

For six switches I'd recommend the "star":

s1 -> s2
s1 -> s3
s2 -> s3
s2 -> s4
s3 -> s4
s3 -> s5
s4 -> s5
s4 -> s6
s5 -> s6

Agreed

will this cause issues with a vlan? what are the benefits?

nope.. the benefits are what Philip said, plus its only one hop to the central switch instead of multiple hops.

i did this and i lost internet and networking.

What kind of switches do you have? Are those L3 devices? Did you configure ports properly, so you don't get a circle?

hoe do i fonfigre the ports correctly

We need to know what kind of switches you have.  They will definitely need to be configured properly.

linksys, hp, procurve, netgear

oh..one of those deals huh?
are they all managed switches? or do we have a mix of some commercial grade and consumer grade stuff here?
That is a mess by the way.

they should all be managed

Do you have a single vlan network or multiple vlans?  Really the port configurations shouldn't be any different than what you had.

So on the top level switch, which only had a single switch connected to it... look at that port and mimic for the other 5 switches.

Then use the same uplink port you used on the other switches.

one lan and one vlan, all ports for vlan are tagged and non vlan untagged.

according to the previous comment switch 1 is suppose to be connected to 2 and 3.