The StoneHenge blog

One of the most commonly unanswered questions in implementing a website content management system is: How do you want to divvy up the content? The answer can depend on the technical limitations of the CMS, but more often it depends on the content demands of the website and skills of the editor.

The strategy for how to break up the content on a page into manageable chunks is called the content model, and a poorly thought-out content model can lead to frustrated editors and/or an inconsistent website appearance. Here, let me show you what I mean.

Here is an example of a content item. This is the "meat" of the page that describes the Nimble Method, our unique service offering.

What's the best way to manage this content? Well, let's see: there's a headline, and a sub-headline, and a little thumbnail image, and of course the body copy itself, plus an extra image - a logo - stuck in the middle of the body. That's actually a pretty complex piece of content.

There are several ways to handle this. Here are the two extremes.

1) Simple. You could manage it as a single field, and rely on the editor to make the editorial judgment how to lay out the elements.

Advantages:

• Maximum flexibility to change the layout to fit the needs of the content. What if I don't want that thumbnail and sub-headline on every page?
• Easiest to develop. The developer need only set up a single text field (albeit a rich-text html field) and a single slot to render the content on the web page.

Disadvantages:

• Lots of opportunities for inconsistencies between pages.
• The editor must has some skill in HTML, plus take extra time fiddling with the tags.

2) Complex. You could break it down into its parts, and manage each part separately. There would be a separate field (or drop-down list, or image upload, etc.) for each piece.

Advantages:

• Maximum consistency among pages. All pages would look uniform.
• Simplest to edit. The editor need not know any html, because the CMS handles the formatting for him. Quick and easy.

Disadvantages:

• Less flexibility. If the editor doesn't want to use a thumbnail and sub-headline on this page, well ... tough. Do it anyway.
• Harder to code. The developer must set up 5 fields, including an image-upload control and a drop-down list control, and must code XSLT to render the content correctly on the website.

Moral of the story

Every website is different, every company's marketing goals for a website is different, and the skill level of every site's editor is different. A good content model accounts for all those differences, and lays out an architecture that balances flexibility vs. consistency and simplicity vs. complexity.

By the way, I design my content model at the beginning of the technical design phase - after the information architecture and creative design have been approved by the client, and while the system architect is blocking out the data model, class diagrams, and suchlike.