Raiders of the lost content model: Turning business objectives into intelligent, structured content

In reality, a web site project often happens to include a comprehensive overhaul of an organization’s overall messaging architecture and editorial processes (oh, and a mandate to overturn years of editorial staff frustration). The web site may even replace other legacy tools and data sources at the organization. Is that why you were hired? Yes! Er, maybe… Either way, you need to be smart about it.

Whether you’re dealing with a mom-and-pop shop or an enterprise, understanding your client’s business logic and extracting an appropriate content model (or “data model”) for their website is crucial, not only for success of the site, but for the organization’s overall messaging, efficiency, and efficacy. Yet, this work is often overlooked and underestimated.

In this session, we’ll talk about how to understand your client’s business logic and develop the content model in Drupal for success of your engagement, and the client’s larger project.

We’ll discuss:

• The importance of your content model and how it affects website sustainability and organizational success

• Common pitfalls and warning signs

• Developing a shared language with your client

• Using that shared language to inform specific technical decisions when building with Drupal

• Practical tools and techniques for extracting the content model from various types of client needs

Expect to walk away from this talk with fresh ideas and new tools to stick in your belt for approaching this work, from estimation through the entire client engagement and beyond.