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One of the things you find out when you do Web development for a living is that the Internet is all about repetition. No matter how many sites you build, the discussion always begins with “So, what’s the content gonna be for this site?” Usually, the response is a blank stare. Companies, organizations, and individuals usually come to the conclusion that they need a Web site long before they’ve thought about what should be on that site.
Some basic rules of content development are common to all Web sites. This chapter gives you the basics to consider as you’re doing perhaps the most important part of building your Web site: contemplating, designing, and creating your content.
Step 1: Classifying Common Types of Web Contents
Step 2: Categorizing Contents
Step 3:Prepping Content for the Web
Website Design
The fact that everything is content doesn’t really help you get your site organized. Thankfully, while anything can be content, things tend to show up on Web sites in some pretty common formats.
As you begin to think about what you want to put on your Web site, you should also consider the different forms that you want that content to take. To give you a kick-start, table below includes the most common forms of content and the data that makes up that content.
| Common Types of Web Site Content | |
| Content Type | Data Commonly Associated with This Type of Content |
| Graphics | GIF and JPEG files |
| Documents | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files |
| Text | HTML text |
| Audio | WAV, AIFF, MP3, Real Audio, and Windows Media files |
| Video | QuickTime, Real Video, and Windows Video |
| Plug-Ins | Flash animations, QuickTime VR, IPIX, and other tools that allow users to view video and graphic content beyond what basic HTML can support |
| Forms | Elements within HTML designed either to submit information or to return targeted content back to a user’s browser |
Developing your content strategy can be the best part of building a Web site because it’s the one time you can sit around a table with your fellow colleagues (or your trusty pet, if you’re building a personal site) and truly be creative about the kinds of things you want on your Web site.
When you’re in the throes of development, you may find yourself uttering: “Remember when we thought this was a good idea!” Content development follows a fairly structured course in the modern world of Web design. It usually includes the following four basic steps:
A great temptation is to just start building
a site the moment something cool comes along, be it an idea, a graphic, or
even words. The reason to do all this planning before even cracking any HTML
code in Dreamweaver or generating any graphics in Fireworks is to make sure
that you don’t get too far down the path of development and suddenly
find yourself backed into a corner, trying to put content where it doesn’t
really belong.
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In addition to organizing your content by its file type, assigning meaningful categories to your content makes developing your site infinitely easier. You can organize your content in any way that makes logical sense for the site you’re building. Most of the time, a single piece of content can be categorized in more than one way, so don’t worry about limiting yourself to just one classification method.
The following list includes some of the most common ways to categorize content:
Organizing by concept: This varies from site to site, but this method entails organizing your site by the major thematic elements, as defined by the content that you’re going to be putting up. An example of this is organizing a company site around the various products it offers.
Classifying by function: Functions are things you can do on a site and can serve as organizing principles for your site. For example, a financial services company may categorize its content around a series of investing and banking tools. In fact, that financial services company may choose to categorize its content not only by the tools on the site (functions) but also by the various products it offers (concepts), which demonstrates that there’s more than one way to slice content.
Categorizing by logical steps: Some sites dispense with the notion of concepts or functions altogether and focus on tasks that get something done. Online auto sites, for example, like to walk visitors through a series of steps to find the car they’re looking for, offering related content at appropriate points along the way.
Sorting by topics or keywords: Sites with a diverse array of content tend to offer users a couple of ways of getting at information. Keywords (topics) are a common way to associate content with more than one area of interest. For example, a music store may organize its site by concepts such as instruments, sheet music, and accessories, and sort the content by topics such as pianos, drums, guitars, amplifiers, and flutes, to name just a few.
Arranging hierarchically: This method of categorization assumesm that some content elements are more important than others, which is reflected in how the content is displayed on the site. Hierarchy is often used in conjunction with another categorization scheme. To go back to the banking example for a moment, imagine that you’ve got your portfolio online. Usually, your portfolio is organized by concept or function, as well as by hierarchy. The portfolio is given more prominence than the other products the bank sells, because the folks at the bank know that the content in the portfolio is more important to the user.
Grouping by type: As noted in the previous section, content type is the other major way to categorize content. On a number of media sites, such as the ABC News site (www.abcnews.com), you can easily find all the video content in a single location, in addition to being able to get your news by feature area.
When preparing your content for delivery to the Web, here are a few handy tips to keep in mind:
Have a plan: If you haven’t gone through the process of content development outlined previously in this chapter, your content is likely to be disorganized. Be sure you have an overview of your content, as well as an outline that shows all the various formats that your content will take and how you’re choosing to categorize it.
Choose the right format: Take a long, hard look at your content. Are you using the right format for certain types of content? Are your graphics in acceptable formats, such as GIF and JPEG? Are your downloadable items in PDF format? Be sure you’re using the commonly accepted Web file formats, and if you’re not, be sure to create some text to explain why you’re not using standard formats.
Be consistent: The Web relies on developers being at least somewhat consistent. So if you have a product data sheet available in PDF format, make sure that your other documents are in PDF format. Similarly, try to stick to the same audio and video formats. That way, when people get to your site, they’ll know what to expect, and they’re not likely to get frustrated.
Make your content more easily digestible: One last thing to keep in mind: Just because you’ve written the Great American Novel and you want to put it on the Web doesn’t mean that you should just put the whole thing up in one huge piece. The Web is made to deliver content in small chunks, and the best sites give viewers the facts first, and then let people delve deeper at their leisure. Remember, people are busy, and they may just need to get the facts quickly. For you as the developer, this means creating highlights, summaries, thumbnails, or charts that provide an introduction or an overview to your core content.
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