« Sketchboards: discover better + faster UX solutions | Main | 10 best intranets of 2008 »

To structure or not to structure

Gadgetopia have written a superb post on the pros and cons of structuring content in a CMS. To quote:

We were meeting with a client the other day about applying some content management to their Web site. We came upon a page of “business partners.” It had a repeated HTML structure consisting of a logo for the partner, their name, their URL, and a few paragraphs about them. There were maybe a dozen or so partners listed.

I agree with everything written in this post, and I've had this discussion many times as part of the CMS selection work I do with clients. I would add, however, another downside to the template approach ("Structured as a single content object"). All too often, I've seen the number of templates multiple like rabbits, to cover each small variation on a theme. Before you know it, you have 150 templates that the authors have to choose between before publishing a page. Hardly an ideal solution.

Posted by jamesr on January 08, 2008 07:19 AM
Categories: Content management, Information architecture