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Defining and Developing Website Content
Content is the most important part of a website, but often website owners become distracted with design and features of a website and the central message is neglected.
Frequently websites are used for a highly specific purpose and other services or information become supplemental. An examples of this would be Google's search service which also offers maps, directories and other features.
When developing your content you should identify "What is the purpose of my website" and then construct the content around this central theme. This is not as easy as it sounds because websites do serve many functions, from student recruitment to faculty resource areas. Developing content can prove to be difficult once questions such as "Who is the audience for this piece of content- students? the general public? faculty and staff?" Audience orientation should be the main focus of your content development
The first step in developing a new website or even updating an old one is identifying the content that you wish to feature on the website. This might entail making a list of everything that you currently have AND everything that you need.
Once you have this list you can pull out what you currently have and revise it. Make sure the information is accurate and is written in a way that is understandable, can be easily scanned and audience oriented. There are many resources on the Internet that can help you "Write for the Web" and many services here at ACC that can help prepare your content for the web.
Next, identify new content that you don't have but need for the site. Again use the resources that are available here at ACC and on the Internet to develop this content so that it is accurate, presentable, and serves it purpose.
Once you have all the content that will be on the website you can move on to Organization Process.
Organizing Website Content
Now that you have all your content prepared, whether it's in digital or paper form, you can organize it for its presentation on the web. Usually, content can be organized into general categories that become main navigation for the website itself.
Professional website developers will often write summaries of their content pieces on notecards, and let outside parties organize them into common stacks. This gives the developers an idea on how the content relates to different people and allows them to identify trends in how content is viewed. While this method can be fairly labor intensive, as a website owner/developer you should get outside opinions on how your content is organized.
The next step is to create a visual layout of how your content is structured. This will then translate into how your website is structured. Simple lists on paper, stacks of note-cards, and flow charts generated by computer programs all assist in the visual content layout of your website. This is done to make content arrangements and adjustments. It is important to remember that the purpose is to get a general visual layout of how the content dictates the structure of the website.
Helpful Tip: Use names for supplementary content pieces that are part of your website and incorporate all of the pieces into your content structure. An example would be "File Download Area for Faculty and Staff" or "Student Forms Area"
Constructing the Website
You will need 3 essential items to construct your website:
Website content,
Website construction software,
A web directory
Optional items include an ACC Website Template, supplementary website content such as Flash, video prepared by certain departments here at ACC (which can be classified as website content), or webforms . All essential items and any optional items should have a place in your website according to your website visual layout that you completed in the "Organizing Website Content" section.
At this point your website content should be written, reviewed, and if necessary, approved. You should know exactly where each individual piece of content resides structurally within the website. It is beneficial to have your content in digital form as in a Microsoft Word or text document to aid in the ease of placement into the website.
Using your website visual layout and your website construction software, construct the "skeleton" of your website. Your main content categories will become the main navigation links of your website that will appear on each page of the website. Create, name, and link each page of your website , following along with your visual website layout. You can leave out the content for now to allow for a final review of the navigability of the website. Feel free to create folders as "sub-directories" to hold common pages. An example from the ACC top level is as follows:
index.php - Main ACC Home-page
/locations/ - (folder or "sub-directory")
index.php - default page of folder - contains listing of pages within folder
nrg.php - website page
evc.php - website page
rgc.php - website page
sac.php - website page
cyp.php - website page
pin.php - website page
rvs.php - website page
In this example the ACC home-page links to "locations" as one of its main navigation links and all the pages relating to that general category are within this folder.
*Helpful Tip* Always create a file named "index" or "default" within a folder that has a listing of the pages within that folder. This helps with linking and navigation. In the above example, if a user types in "http://www.austincc.edu/locations" into their address bar in their web browser, "index.php" is displayed. Typing in "http://www.austincc.edu/locations" OR "http://www.austincc.edu/locations/index.php" displays "index.php"
Once the skeleton of the website is completed, open your home-page (index.php,htm,html) with your web browser and navigate to each of the website pages using ONLY your navigation and links within webpage. Make sure all pages can be reached and are not "orphaned" or not linked to from another page. If a page needs to be moved and re-linked , do this now and repeat the process of navigation through your website.
When you are satisfied with the structure and navigation of your website begin placing content within the web pages. At this stage you can perform a final review of content, format, and any other functions that the content may require, which may include inserting text links within content to other pages or documents.
*Helpful Tip* create a folder called "documents" "pdf" or similar to keep all non web files such as PDFs and Word documents in a single repository to allow ease of location when making text links within content.
Finally, once you are satisfied with website content, structure, and navigation, "upload" ALL of your website files and folders to your web directory. Navigate to your website using your web browser and perform a final check of website content, navigation, and links.
Maintaining the Website
Maintaining your website is just as important as constructing it in the first place. If content becomes old and useable there is not much point in having the website at all. To avoid this maintenance must be performed fairly often to ensure visitors receive useful relevant information.
Identify Static content vs dynamic content and be more aware of which pages within your site will change more frequently than others.
Ex: An "About Us" page that describes your area may not change often (static) but homepage announcements, links to current events, and calendars may change rapidly (dynamic).
Use a link checking tool to check for broken links.
Respond to, and act on, email sent in from the site. If a user has taken the time to alert you to a broken link or outdated content, chances are he or she wasn't the first one to stumble across it.
