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• 1 2023-03-24T14:04:37+00:00 Creating a Content Inventory 1 plain 2023-03-24T14:04:37+00:00

  Usually, content inventories (or “content audits”) are created during website redesigns for pre-existing websites. It is also useful for you to start thinking through what content will exist on the site before you’ve finished creating it. Creating a content inventory will help you to prioritize and then scope out the creation of new pages. It will also help you to create an intentional organizational structure for your site.

  To start, you will want to think about the categories of information you want to convey to your audience, and why it is important that your user know it. This does not need to be an official document, but it can be helpful to sketch it out. For example, if you’re building a companion website about an exhibit, you may want to include categories like:

  1. Information about the collection itself
     1. This tells the user why I collected these items together. It also gives them information about the cultural context for this collection and some information about me as a curator, so they can understand my motivations.
  2. The items themselves
     1. I want my users to see the items 
  3. Exhibits made with the items
     1. I want my users to be able to see the items in context and understand how they relate to each other
  4. Outside resources
     1. I want my users to see things that were written by other universities and cultural heritage institutions about my collection 

  Then you will list all of the pages you will want to include in your site, trying to put each item under a category. You may realize as you go that certain categories need to be added or combined, and that’s ok! The important thing is to think about how each page contributes to the overall information your site is trying to convey.

  We recommend creating your inventory in a spreadsheet and putting the category in another column, so you can get a sense of all of the content for each category.

  But I’m doing a blog/digital exhibit… Do you really expect me to write out every post or item I’ll ever add?

  Absolutely not! For those of you who are creating a blog or digital exhibit (or really anything with lots of repeat content that will be organized into groups), you can just use the sitemap to show groups of content. So, for example, you may want to create a node on the tree that’s “Content by region” or “Posts with a category of ‘news.’” For you, the sitemapping exercise can be used to think about how you want to organize your smaller items (like posts or exhibit objects) into groups that will help your site tell a story.