Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Sample Content Deck

In response to a previous entry, The Power of a Content Deck, I'm providing a sample content deck for my readers to download and use.  This sample deck is only a few pages, but the intention is to provide a format that can be replicated for each page of a site.  This format has evolved out of twelve years of interactive project management, and is the best example of an integrated document that I've been able to develop.  As mentioned in my previous entry, this document ties in the following aspects of the build:
  • Information Architecture - Each page within the content deck must be numbered according to the page numbers in the final information architecture, so that the documents correlate to one another, and the team and client can easily reference both in conjunction.
  • Search Engine Optimization - The deck includes page and meta description tags, which will be indexed and used by search engines to qualify and index your website content.
  • Multimedia - The deck makes specific reference to any imagery or video being used on each page of the site, so that the build team can locate these assets quickly as they develop each page.
This deck format will work for most website builds, and should be amended to meet unique needs as required.  It's been my experience that this deck has saved hours of work by presenting relevant information in a single location.  I've had great success and feedback, not only from my team, but from my clients, as well.  Please share your feedback with me.

Sample Content Deck

4 comments:

  1. Nice item to share, Gina! I would add a few things, but for many people, this is a fine place to start getting their content assets organized and managed. I would add a version table at the top, indicating not only what version, but who revised it last (client owner, dev team, etc.) and the actual date of each revision, not a date auto-populated by MSWord. I also find it useful to itemize repeating content items (menu labels, footer links) within the deck, and to indicate each page that contains it, especially noting pages that do not, such as overlays or dialogs.

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  2. Hi Lynda,
    Thanks for your comment. I agree with you entirely - this is a simple starting point, but depending on the complexity of the build, users should tweak the format to suit their needs. I tried to standardize it to be more generic, but it will invariably require customization for most projects.

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  3. You are a blessing, Gina! I've been looking for a new way to organize and manage my content decks and this is perfect. Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thanks for the note, JB. I'm glad the document was useful to you. If you can better-organize your content, it will result in many, many benefits for you and team. Good luck!

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