Trumblog

Here is another of my old posts from a now defunct blog, originally posted 6/27/07.

The Internet is a fluid medium that encourages revisions and updates to keep sites fresh and relevant. But that can’t happen if making those changes is too time-consuming or expensive. Making the right decisions now about how your website is produced will impact how easily your site is updated later.

When your site’s content and design are joined either as HTML or Flash, any changes to one must take into account the other. For example, when content and design are not independent, adding a 7th paragraph of text to a webpage designed to hold 6 paragraphs could ruin your carefully designed page layout; updating the site to match your company’s new brand colors could mean changing every header on every page so that the color looks right.

Keeping the design separate from the content alleviates this issue because a change to one can be made without affecting the other. When the design is flexible by default, the layout doesn’t suffer if the content expands or decreases. Changing the colors to incorporate your company’s new branding is simple if the page title (content) is separate from the formatting of that title (design), then adjusting the formatting once changes the look of all the titles on the site.

Think of this process like baking where the batter is the content and different baking pans represent different designs. I can take blueberry muffin batter (the content) and pour it in any container (any design) I want—a muffin tin, a few small loaf pans or a Bundt pan. The batter is the same, but the final product can look drastically different. On the other hand, whether I use banana-nut, cranberry or blueberry batter, if I use the same muffin tin to bake them the final product will look basically the same.

Two tools commonly used to keep content and design separate are XML (Extensible Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). XML describes the content and its structure but not the formatting and design. CSS describes the styling of HTML content without including the content itself.

A side benefit of separating content from design is that the content can be used in multiple deliverables: a website, a PDF and a CD-ROM for example. The design can also be used with completely different sets of content, for instance, English and Spanish. This isn’t limited to HTML either. Flash can also be produced using XML with the same benefits.

The resources to produce a more easily updated website using these methods isn’t much more for a small site and will actually save money for a larger one. But working with an experienced partner and planning ahead are critical.

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