Update: NLC has published an extensive whitepaper of Sitecore best practices. Includes details on recommended template architecture, governance models and measures of success.
In a previous post, I discussed some of the decision points for content granularity. Today, I would like to add to this by focusing on some specific web content management products.
At NLC we work with three commercial web content management products: Ektron, RedDot and Sitecore. While the implementation details of each differ, we have found that there are a number of simple rules that apply to all when arriving at the level of content granularity for a WCMS project.
- Meta data – for example, search engine keywords - should be treated separately from the actual content. Ektron includes this functionality out-of-the-box, RedDot and Sitecore require some configuration.
- Many types of content require a teaser or short description of the full content. This teaser information should be stored separately from content. This allows the teaser information to be used when lists of links or tables of content are being generated.
- Most sites require a page to have two titles, a short one for display in the navigation, the other to be displayed in the content as the actual page title. This is allows for descriptive titles, while keeping the real estate dedicate to navigation at a minimum.
- All date and geographic information should be treated separately.
- Content layouts that follow a tabular/grid pattern often pose difficulties for content authors – especially when the authors are required to create the layout from scratch. Special templates can greatly simplify this for the content authors.
In the next posting, I will conclude the discussion of content granularity with an examination of several system upgrade projects and how content granularity affected those projects.