It’s Website Wednesday at Starr Office Services and today I am working on my site content inventory. If you know anything about me, it’s that I love organization: “A place for everything and everything in its place” is one of my mottos.
As I mentioned last week, the new ThinkSOS website will launch this spring and while I have most of the content and materials already written, a website content inventory is a detailed list of everything I have and still need for my site. And yes, that is as tedious and time consuming as it sounds but without it, a website may not function the way you want it to even if it is beautiful to look at.
The best way I have found to stay organized through this process is to create an MS Excel Workbook and divide the content logically using different worksheets and creating visual blocks using colour dividers. I scoured the internet looking for a sample content inventory I could use and there were free samples to take advantage of but I found that none of them had the details I wanted so I created my own.
Sorting Your Spreadsheet
Sort your spreadsheet in a way that works best for you. I prefer sorting by category but it is a matter of personal choice. Here are a few examples of how you can sort your content:
Alphabetical- to find topics and pages easily
Timeline – to prioritize and keep you on track
Category – to keep ‘like’ content together, ie Services
Column headings:
Once you’ve decided how you will sort your spreadsheet, think about the column headings. What information do you need to track? This is where the online inventories failed me; there were not enough headings to give a clear understanding of content at a glance so I had to create my own.
1. ID number (for project purposes)
2. Page title
3. Parent page
4. Page type ie text, form, table
5. Filename or URL address of page
6. Keywords
7. Images Required
8. Due Date
9. Status (Done / x% Complete / Edit / Trash
10. Update Frequency
If you are working with a team, you may also want to add a heading to determine who is responsible for the content.
