By Corey Vilhauer CHAPTER 10Lullabot’s Jeff Eaton talks at length about the relationship between
content and development, reminding us that editors aren’t going to be
happy with the typical rigid CMS system. In his article, “When Editors
Design: Controlling Presentation in Structured Content,” he says that “pro-
viding editors and writers with more control over the presentation of their
content is where many well-intentioned content models break down.”^13 For
this reason, Eaton says, “some teams go to the opposite extreme. They pile
dozens of custom fields onto each content type to capture every possible
presentation option, or they give editors a menu of carefully tailored visual
templates to choose from for each post.”
This is where collaboration between developers and content strategists
is so important. It’s also where collaboration between developers and edi-
tors becomes crucial.
Remember, we content people aren’t interface designers, but we can
work between the two camps to help organize fields for editors while still
developing a structured content model that the developers can build upon.
That’s exactly what we want: a website that both editors and developers
continue to use, especially after launch.
Governance: When and Where
So the website’s been launched. Now what?
Easy. Begin by ditching the assumption that the website is finished.
Because no website is ever actually finished. Ever. None. No way.
In a traditional content strategy sense, this is where we begin talking
about data analysis and content testing and A/B testing and all of the post-
launch governance tools we’ve begin implementing over the years. Yet,
these tools mean nothing without a heavy dose of editor education — edu-
cation that’s just as important as any content model we could devise.
13 Eaton, Jeff; “When Editors Design”, http://smashed.by/content-structure