Content planning checklist for a Drupal site

I would say the types of content being used on the site you're writing a strategy document for!

Sorry if that sounded snarky, but I think there's some truth to saying that the flexibility and power of Drupal is a double-edged sword. The ability to tailor the content types to our specific sites also means that they're not really conducive to "one-size-fits-all" type solutions. So when gathering ideas that others have used in the content strategies for their sites, just be mindful to analyze them against your site's needs before adopting them.

With that said, this is a key content strategy tip from my organization's site implementation:

• Structure of the document - institutional identity, creative brief, content outline, page tables.
  • The organization's identity was the result of our re-branding a few years back. The identity summary page is at the front of our web content strategy in order to stay mindful of it.
  • The creative brief was undertaken in the early stages of our new site design, the core of it is that six strategic business objectives were identified. This was incorporated into the strategy document, and every page table maps back to at least one of these objectives.
  • The content outline was undertaken a little further along in the redesign. It's the meat-and-potatoes listing of every content type and the fields that go into it. This was incorporated into the document, so each page table can list which content types are being used on that section of the site.
  • The page tables were created from a template found in Content Strategy for the Web, by going through our wireframes a section at a time. For every section of the site (30 in our case) a page table was drawn up listing who on our staff would be accountable for it, where the source content would come from, what the outstanding questions, risks, technical implications, and estimated workload were. And (as mentioned) which content types and strategic goals it mapped to.

So there's a lot more that goes into an effective web content strategy, this is very workflow focused. But for our use case - having a strategy document to assist with a smooth website implementation - it was very effective. Especially having the section "owners" and source content identified, as those things were spun out into a spreadsheet that we used as a checklist to through the sprint.

Also worth mentioning, that spreadsheet made a distinction between different types of tasks to complete. Static and dynamic content were split into two lists, and other lists were kept for site administration tasks and miscellaneous tasks.

one thing that can make a big difference is whether you're redesigning a site already on drupal or moving to drupal for the first time

in doing the second, i was frequently baffled by the terminology and infrastructure need to accomplish things i'd already been doing for many years

i had a very sharp lead architect with the company we contracted with to build our sites; he managed to drag me to the end of building a functional spec he and others could work from, but i often found that his best efforts and mine weren't enough to bridge the gap of really understanding what each other were talking about

what would have helped me a lot early in the process was some generic way to map general web concepts onto drupal concepts

in terms of lisa's list above, almost all the terms used (even the most general ones) could be taken to mean one thing for general web design and something much more specific related to drupal in particular

i find i can run into trouble whether i just state a need plainly (unadapted for drupal) or whether i try to frame in drupal concepts

in the first case, a developer will tend to adapt for you and maybe do something you didn't expect; in the second, you can actively lead him astray by trying to be more specific

for someone coming to drupal for the first time, it would help to have a way to map general concepts onto drupal as an orientation before beginning actual spec'ing or development

i was picking up drupal on the fly which made for a rocky road at times but a good ending; but some people in this situation could end up with incomplete or unsatisfactory results and end up leaving the platform