Archives for Websites

Employee personas and how to create them

By: James Robertson Posted: June 23, 2020

Creating employee personas is an effective way to understand the needs of your workforce, and to plan and design solutions accordingly.

The three clicks myth

By: James Robertson Posted: December 17, 2009

The ‘three clicks rule’ is perhaps the most widely known web design principle, but it’s a myth.

Metadata fundamentals for intranets and websites

By: James Robertson Posted: October 20, 2008

Metadata is a topic that almost invariably comes up when creating or refreshing a website or intranet. While basic metadata is routinely captured by most publishing tools, including content management …

Metadata fundamentals for intranets and websites

By: James Robertson Posted: October 19, 2008

While basic metadata is routinely captured by most publishing tools, there is still widespread confusion about its uses and limits.

Content migration: options and strategies

By: James Robertson Posted: July 22, 2008
There is a lot of work involved in redeveloping and relaunching an intranet or website. The project management challenges start early, and it is easy to overlook the time (and effort) needed to migrate the content from the old to the new site. Yet, for its lack of visibility, content migration is often the single biggest activity in a web redevelopment. Certainly it is the least interesting, and unfortunately unavoidable. This article explores a number of options for the migrating content, and provides some practical suggestions that should help it to go smoothly. Redeveloping a site Two factors often drive

Content migration: options and strategies

By: James Robertson Posted: July 21, 2008

Explores the options for migrating content as part of a site redesign, giving tips and suggestions.

Your new site will be 20% different from current site

By: James Robertson Posted: August 9, 2007
Implementing a new website or intranet is a unique opportunity to work with new functionality and ideas and push the bounds of what the site will do. When a new underlying platform is being implemented, such as a content management system or portal, the scope for rethinking the site can be increased further. Yet, despite all of this opportunity for change, the simple rule of thumb is that the new site will be at best 20% different from the current site. There are fundamental reasons for this, which will be explored in this briefing. The implications of the rule for

Your new site will be 20% different from current site

By: James Robertson Posted: August 9, 2007

A simple rule of thumb when planning a site redesign is that the new site will be no more than 20% different from the current site.

Separate design and the CMS

By: James Robertson Posted: September 30, 2006
There are two major elements to most web redevelopment projects: the redesign of the existing site, and the selection of a new (or replacement) content management system (CMS). These two elements reflect the underlying issues that typically drive web projects: the problems with the structure and content of the published site, and issues with the management and publishing of the site. The temptation can be to select a single provider to deliver both the redesign of the site and the underlying CMS. This would, however, be a mistake. Instead, organisations are almost always better served by separating out the design

Introduction to web accessibility

By: Patrick Kennedy Posted: March 1, 2006

The industry is finally accepting responsibility for providing accessible websites and intranets. Yet, a great deal of misunderstanding continues to surround the subject of accessibility.