Content Inventories
I usually recommend people do their content inventory in two phases:
- First, a macro inventory that captures the most important elements of the site, but doesn't get into a lot of detail. I find this is useful at the start of the project for giving team members a general understanding of the variety and breadth of the content they'll be working with.
- Then, a micro inventory will capture every page on a site. This is such an important step, and it's the part that's most often skipped. Sure, it's boring and labour intensive, but you can't develop a deep understanding of your content without it. In micro inventories I often include page elements so I can keep track of important content chunks that might be re-used across pages.
In addition to the techniques Veen describes in the Adaptive Path essay, I'd add this point: every page (or page element, depending on how granular you want to make your content inventory) should have it's own unique ID in addition to an ID that describes its place in the site structure. It's as simple as adding a column on the far left and inserting a unique number for each row, like so:
| ID | LinkID | LinkName | URL |
| 23 | 2.1.1.1.0 | Server Products | http://www.xyz.com/products/servers/ |
| 24 | 2.1.1.1.1 | Web Server | http://www.xyz.com/products/servers/web/ |
This allows you to re-assign pages to new sections (i.e., change the LinkID) as you go through the design/re-design process without modifying their unique IDs. It also suggests that a database is a better tool for content inventories than a spreadsheet. (And that reminds me... somewhere I have an Access application I built for doing content inventories. I should dig that out.)
