Is it Content?

What is content?

When talking about what content is, it helps to think about why websites exist. At its simplest, a website exists to communicate information. Whether that is a business providing information about products and services available in order to gain customers or an organization providing information in order to educate others, the goal is the same - provide information to those seeking it. As such, we can consider content to be any information (cake) an entity wants to communicate to a group or groups of people who seek to consume it.

What isn't content?

Given that content is is the information being communicated on a website, what does that mean is not content? For me, "not content" - or presentation - is anything on a website that's only purpose is to enhance or improve the way in which that information is presented to those visiting the site - it's the icing (and decorations) on the cake.

Let's look at some examples:

• The body copy of a news article - content.
• A company's mission statement - content.
• A bio about the company CEO - content.
• A photo of the company CEO - content.
• The location of the bio and photo of the CEO on a page - not content.
• A photo at the top of the page with text displaying the page name (hero) - probably not content.
• An image which depicts a graph or other contextual information - content.
• An image which adds visual interest to the site but does not provide additional context about the information presented (the picture in this article, for example!) - likely not content.

As you can see, there is some gray area and room for interpretation when determining what is and isn't content. Additionally, whether or not something is content may vary depending on the site or situation.

A few questions you can ask yourself to help differentiate content (cake) from presentation (icing) are:

• Is the information likely to be reused somewhere else on the site?
• Does the information convey something useful to the end user?
• Does the information enhance the way the site looks without providing additional context?

Answering yes to the first two questions means you are likely dealing with content/cake. An affirmative to the last question likely indicates you are adding presentation/icing.

Quiz 1 - Content or Presentation?

What, you didn't know there would be quiz?! No problem - it's pretty subjective and if the idea of a test gives you too many flashbacks from your school days, feel free to skip ahead! It's your turn to decide what is and isn't content. Here are a few types of information that are commonly found on a website. Think about each and whether you would consider it content or presentation; my personal answers/opinions can be found below.

1. News article copy/body
2. An image related to a news article
3. Frequently Asked Questions
4. Board of directors list w photos
5. Text/header above the board of directors labeling them as such
6. A Call To Action (combination of image, text and a button/link prompting the user click on it to take some action)

Why does it matter?

At this point, you might be asking yourself why it matters what is content and what is presentation within your website. That's a great question! To some degree, it doesn't matter since ultimately the information needs to be stored and editable in the CMS regardless of whether it is cake or icing. However, the manner and location in which the information is stored will likely vary depending on whether it is content or presentation. In general, content should be stored within the CMS tree and presentation should be applied and stored at the point at which the content is referenced, i.e. at the page, component or block level. Content is stored with structure and reusability in mind; presentation is stored for ease of use and flexibility.

Types of content

Now that we've (at least loosely) established what is and isn't content, let's talk about different types of content, how each might be utilized and why choosing between the various types matters.

Page Specific vs. Shared (or reusable)

Some content on your website might only ever need to exist on a single page on the site while other content might be displayed on multiple pages with content potentially being shared globally or just across a few pages.

The idea of reusing or sharing content can be the most challenging concept for content editors to wrap their heads around. Many editors are familiar, and comfortable, with a very page-centric approach to building a website. While they are more than likely familiar with the idea of the same content appearing on multiple pages, it can take some time for them to adjust to the idea that not all content for a page has to be stored or edited on that page.

Why It Matters

Being able to enter content once and reference it multiple times impacts the editing experience. Centralizing the entry of reused content makes content editors happy as it prevents duplication of data entry and reduces content entry time. In order to be able to reuse content, thought must be given when organizing and building the content structure of a site. Whether or not content will be used on a single page or multiple pages drives where that content should be stored and how it should be edited. For reusable content you most likely want to create a separate content "library" or area specifically for content which can be reused.

Structured vs Unstructured

Once you have determined that a particular element of content should be reusable, the next consideration in determining how it to organize it is whether the content is better treated in a structured or unstructured manner. Structured content is that which can generally be broken out into small, logical pieces or fields such as information about a person which can be broken down into a first name, last name, title, photo, bio and so on. Unstructured content is that which is more free form and variable in nature and is generally entered in a text area, rich text editor or WYSIWYG block.

Why It Matters

In my mind, whether content should be structured or unstructured is the most import consideration as it has the biggest impact on not only reusability, but also the content editing experience. It is also the hardest decision to change down the road.

Structured content such as the personal information alluded to above COULD be entered in a single block of text, however that makes for a cumbersome editing experience. Even more importantly, it makes it challenging to display information about multiple people using a consistent look and feel, especially if that information is displayed on multiple pages. By structuring this type of website content, the presentation/icing can be separated from the content/cake and each usage can be decorated differently. You can have cupcakes, tiered cakes or sheet cakes all with different flavors of icing. Yum!

Quiz 2- Structured or Unstructured Content?

Let's do another quiz (or feel free to skip it!). For each of the following, think about whether you would create the associated content type as structured or unstructured content. Again, answers/opinions below.

1. News article meta data such as author, date, and category.
2. News article copy/body with image(s)
3. Board of directors list with photos
4. Call To Action
5. General page copy

Summary

My litmus test for determining if something is content consists of the following questions:

• Does it convey important information related to the goals and purpose of the website?
• It is able, and likely, to be used in multiple places across the site?

If the answer to either of those is yes, in my mind, it's content. Simply put - is it cake or is it icing?

If you aren't craving cake by now, you have more will power than me (my personal favorite is German chocolate!). Hopefully in addition to wanting a slice of cake, you also have some food for thought for determining what information on your website should be treated as content and how to build and organize that content.

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Quiz Answers (based on my opinion only, feel free to disagree!)

Quiz 1

1. Content
2. Content - unless it provides no additional context for the article. However, in my experience, images related to news articles generally provide valuable or at least relevant context for the article (unlike the image for this article which only serves to make you hungry!).
3. Content
4. Content
5. Presentation
6. Trick question. In the past, I have generally considered calls to action as content. However, I am starting to reconsider that and am now leaning towards CTA's being presentation as they are rarely identical, even if the same action is referenced on different pages, and thus are not reusable nor do they convey information relevant to the purpose of the website.

Quiz 2

1. Structured
2. Unstructured, although the overall news article content should be structured to combine the items from #1 and #2 in a single type
3. Structured
4. Structured
5. Unstructured