Content Inventory and Audit
Posted: May 25th, 2015One of the most important steps in planning for a new version of the Library website is knowing what content we have and what content needs to be migrated to the new site. In order to plan for this, a two-step process of content inventory and content audit are commonly used; the inventory outlines what content is currently available and the audit outlines the plan for that content moving forward. Here is how we completed this process as part of our redesign.
The Inventory
For the site inventory, we created a series of spreadsheets (using the Drupal database structure), which listed all the currently published web pages with the page titles, URLs, and some helpful statistics such as page views for the 2014 academic year, and the last updated date. The web support team worked together to separate this content into lists grouped by working unit within the Library. We were also able to prune some of the content that was obviously erroneous or redirected to newer versions. This work was completed in December.
The Audit
Using the spreadsheets created during the inventory, we prepared lists for unit heads that asked them to review the content and get back to us with answers to the following questions:
- Does this content belong within your unit?
- Do you need this content migrated to new website?
- Is this content up to date?
- Can this content be deleted?
We also left space for reviewers to add any additional comments and a separate worksheet to identify and content we (the web support team) may have missed.
After allowing roughly a month to complete this work, the web support team processed the lists by deleting the content that was flagged. In actuality we only deleted that content which was obviously erroneous and simply unpublished the other content in case we need to refer to it at a later date. We also worked to solve some of the issues that arose such as content that did not clearly belong within a single working unit as well as cleaning up links to content that was deleted. This process was completed just this week.
What Now?
At this point we will work toward consolidating all the lists and identify gaps were content is either listed under zero or multiple working units. We will also begin to apply the work that we have completed on the IA (Information Architecture) to plan for the new location for this content in the next version of the website.
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