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We are updating our documentation library to be ready for Sector 10! Find out more in our Sector 10 roadmap or head straight to our collection of Sector 10 - Changes and Updates.
No one web project is like another, but there are a few common touchstones that you should consider at the start of your project.
We want you and your site to succeed. A good content management system can help you to sort and organise your content. But having a content management system is not enough. You need a strategy for both your project and your content.
Touchstone 1 - Why you are doing this?
One page. One hour.
- What are your objectives?
- Where are you at, and where do you want to go?
- What does success look like?
- How can you measure the success of your project?
- How much money and resource do you want to invest?
Write it down. Circulate it in your team. Pin it to your wall.
Touchstone 2 - Build your content strategy around your users' needs.
A content strategy helps you to deliver useful, usable content and services to your audience - in both the short and long-term.
- What is your content about, who reads it, and why?
- How is the content organised and displayed?
- What people and processes are needed to support content creation and management?
- Who is authorised to make decisions now and in the future?
Touchstone 3 - Understand the tools.
Like all content management systems, Sector provides you with a set of tools that have been built to enable consistency without enforcing uniformity. We want you to make your website your own, but we also want you to understand how to work with Sector - not against it.
- Understanding information architecture
- Understanding online navigation patterns and pathways
- Understanding online content design principles
- Understanding sitebuilding
- Breaking the rules
Touchstone 4 - Plan. Start small. Grow tall.
Do not follow any methodology to the nth degree. Methodologies are not going to build your project. People are. Work with a multidisciplinary team and create an environment that allows input and feedback from everybody.
- Define a minimal viable project and publish when you are ready.
- Iterate and iterate again.
Touchstone 5 - Think about the future. Work in the open.
Sector is open source. Sparks Interactive is committed to moving not just the code, but designs, ideas, intentions, and failures into the open. This process will take time and change the way we work. Join us!