Set up a new section for your website

While working on a new section for the website I’m in charge of, it occurred to me that this task could be compared to filing paper documents, and should be achieved in five steps.

Gathering documents

This first step is about gathering all information you want to publish in the new section. It includes making sure all information you get belongs to the same set of boxes. You also have to make sure each piece of content appears only once. Find a native location for each of them, reuse will be dealt with later (but you can already take notes of what will be reused). It is also the right time to exclude information already showing in any other section of the website. You want to gather only core documentation for the topic you’re interested in.

Opening boxes

Content now needs to be organised into sub-topics. Think of them as if they were the boxes to which you break down documentation. Content generally can be broken down using these useful questions: what, who, how, when, where. Depending on the amount of content, you will end up with one or more pages for each “box”. The challenge is to have not too much and not too few boxes.

Writing the labels

Deciding on what each sub part should be named may seem a not so important matter. Indeed it is one of the most crucial decisions you have to make when setting up your new section. Because such a label should be meaningful for all users and should reflect the efficient information organisation you came up with in the previous phase. If you can’t find a harmonious and efficient set of labels to put on your boxes, it may mean you have to reconsider your set of boxes or repartition among them.

Filling boxes

It is now time to proceed to actual filing: put each document in a box. A document should go in one box and only one. You will deal with reuse and links later on. If you find one box is over packed compared to others, you may have to review your boxes or labels to reach a good balance. Once you’re done, have a look at your filled and labelled boxes. Do you reckon it is easy to find where any topic belongs? Ask a friend to do the same exercise, and make any adjustment they would suggest.

Finalising organisation

You now have a well balanced set of information. At that stage you will want to optimise your content inserting links between pages and displaying some information in more than one place. It is now time to tag, highlight and comment content properly to use your CMS re use facilities in full.

Remember that what you’re looking to achieve is a meaningful, complete and well balanced section that allows users to find what they are looking for. That’s why I recommend this 5 steps approach: gathering, breaking down, labelling, filing, linking.