Content Inventory
A content inventory is a list of all the content on your site. The content (the information) is what your site offers to your users. You have to know what you are offering. In an Content Assessment you can decide whether each piece of it is still needed; still accurate; and still written in the right level of detail, the right tone, and the right language for your users. Most off the times these two types are combined in a Content Audit.
Many Web sites grow by accretion. People keep adding pages to the Web site, but few pages ever get taken away. After a while, if you don't keep a content inventory, no one knows what is on the site. It is very hard to maintain a site if you don't have a content inventory.
If you are developing a new site, setting up a content inventory at the beginning puts you on a good path. If you keep up the inventory as the site matures, you will continue to know what is on the site, how old each page is, when each page has been revised or needs to be reviewed, and so on.
If you are revising a Web site, start with a content inventory of what is now on the site. Then, use your Web site requirements to create a planned content inventory for the new version of the site.
Create a spreadsheet or use some database application to categorize and describe the information on every page of your site. You should include:
- The overall topic or area to which the page belongs
- The page title and URL
- A short description of the information on the page
- When the page was created, date of last revision and when the next page review is due
- Who wrote the page (if you know it), who is responsible for the page now and that person's contact information
- The expiration date of the page (if there is one)
- Other pages that this page links to
- Page status – keep, delete, revise, in revision process, planned, being written, being edited, in review, ready for posting, or posted.
If you use a spreadsheet or database, you can sort the inventory by any of the categories of information you have. The primary category might be by overall topic or area so that you can see all the pages that relate to the same information. For maintenance purposes, you may also want to sort by date of last update so that you can view all of the old content on the site and review these pages to determine if they need updating.
At Maloo Business Consulting we use advanced tools to easily create inventories on excisting content. It does not matter if this content is in a file system or database, we will create an easy to use Content Inventory Report to use for analysing your content. If you are looking for someone to create you an Content Inventory, please contact us at services@malooconsulting.com