Managing Content and Workflow

Terri Willard, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
May 2001

How you manage your Web sites is intrinsically linked to how you manage your organization; indeed they are essentially one and the same tasks. As Amy Gahran, editor and founder of Contentious zine explains:¹

A Web site can communicate effectively with the world outside your organization only if there is good communication and coordination within your organization. However, few organizations excel in those areas. This is why so many organizational sites, especially corporate sites, are flat "brochureware" rather than living, moving representations of (and gateways to) the organization itself.

Managing a Web site is ultimately about managing people and relationships. It is about helping to bring together a team of individuals to support the ability of staff to communicate their ideas effectively in a new communications medium. This can be extremely challenging for many organizations in which staff are predominantly used to working on projects individually. However, as Web communications have advanced over the past five years, skill sets have become increasingly specialized. The days in which a single Webmaster can do graphic design, information architecture and writing—while maintaining the computer network—are over. Web work is teamwork with all of the joys and difficulties implied therein. The development team for any project with an online component will most likely include a number of individuals, depending on the mix of skill sets needed. Some of these roles may be filled by program staff who understand the content. Others require the talents of general support staff or the expertise of technical personnel.

To minimize duplicated efforts and to ensure easy communication of procedures for developing online content, the stages of Web development should mirror print production processes as closely as possible. This does not imply that a lack of clearly defined procedures for creating print products should be taken as licence for the ad hoc management of Web products and service. On the contrary, many organizations have found that the process of improving their ability to manage the delivery of content on the Web has had spin-off effects on improving their print production processes.

Web managers will need to think about how these elements fit together into a coherent production process,² accepting that reality does not always follow the best-laid plans and processes.

Issues Index

• Types of Content
• Building a Common Vocabulary: Modules, Sites and Spaces
• Principles of Web Management
• In-house Staffing vs. Outsourcing
• Internal Capacity Building
• Outsourcing
• Quality Control
• Newsletters – Integrating Print and Electronic Versions
• Integrating Print and Web Documents
• Technical Issues: What You Should Know
• Managing Documents
• Organizing Content
• Editorial Policy, Standards and Output Planning
• Version Control

¹ Amy Gahran, "Becoming one with your site," Content Spotlight. http://www.content-exchange.com/cx/html/newsletter/1-9/vt1-9.htm (9 August 1999).
² One example of an ideal electronic product development process is outlined by Nathan Shedroff in "The Interactive Development Process," http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/process/index.html (19 July 2001)