Building the content model
Along with changing the look and organization of the site, the rebranding also included developing a content model. At Komen, we use Stellent® Site Studio (now part of Oracle Universal Content Management) as our content management solution. In the old komen.org, our content consisted of Word documents uploaded into Stellent's database. Stellent uses a dynamic conversion tool to render them for the web. While this can be handy, it results in very unstructured content and a great deal of repeated data.
To create a more structured content model, we inventoried and analysed the old content and interviewed the content owners to make sure we understood their needs. From there, we identified categories of content and their structures--everything from the simple question and answer structure of a frequently asked question to the details involved in describing grant offerings, with their requirements, responsibilities, due dates, and application details.
With it all in a spreadsheet, the next step was transferring it to the content management system. It was a new idea for Stellent, and our lead tech spent some time consulting with them to determine the best method, but once they figured out the details, it was full speed ahead.
For each content category, we set up meta-data fields in the database and associated them with content pieces that provided fields to hold each structural element. We migrated the data from the old Word documents into the new content pieces, set up layout files for the website, and plugged in the content.
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