[Sigia-l] What do you call that place between the database andthe live site?

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> Someone mentioned the problem of content not fitting the 
> templates. 

That was me, I think.

> A sandbox tool would be helpful in that situation. 
> But even better would be a fully developed UCD process so 
> that you don't run into those snags with a content-driven 
> site. Templates should not be developed until content 
> requirements are in place. If your team is not generating the 
> content, then someone also needs to work with the client to 
> ensure that their content meets the agreed-upon requirements. 

That's where I think the problem is mainly located. But what do you mean
by "content requirements" in practice? How do you "ensure that their
content meets the agreed-upon requirements" when you might be dealing
with many thousands of pages of content currently formatted in a wide
variety of different ways that might be very different to the way you
want to present it in the newly designed site? I've worked with clients
who didn't know what their content consisted of, let alone able to help
work with me on that problem. 

> (a) If you are redesigning a site that is already dynamic, it 
> would be nice if that site could generate a content index for 
> inventory purposes. I have not worked with a CMS that 
> exported file information in hierarchical format.
> Has anyone else?
> 

CMS vendors have a very (very) narrow view of the world of web
development, let alone information design :-)

What would be ideal is such an inventory (preferably allowing easy
access to the actual content if needed) indexed such that it can be used
to refer to the new IA. The new IA in turn could adopt a similar
inventory format describing the emerging design. For example, if the
current site has a template "T" with content "A" (a headline/title), "B"
(some body text), "C" (a box-out) and "D" (some links to related
content), then the designer can specify that A, B and D map to the new
IA as "NA", "NB" and "ND," while "C" is ignored. This implies an
artefact of some kind that performs the mapping between the two. The new
IA, once mapped, could then start importing the existing content. Once
imported, you have the makings of what XML was designed to do: describe
data independently from presentation. The presentation is the new IA
design - can you see where I'm going on this? A "content framework" to
allow the actual work you described. Yes, it would be "automated" in the
way you appear to discourage, but in my opinion it would be a hugely
positive step to institute a natural habitat for content in the design
process. There is none at present.

> To sum up, I think that the sandbox is best used for small QA 
> adjustments near the end of the design process, unless your 
> IAs prefer to design using this tool and it is cost-effective 
> for them to do so.

I think it all hinges on what we mean by "sandbox" here. That's far from
clear on this thread so far I think (hence the title!).

Jonathan


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