Late last week we needed to get all of our content inventoried, what’s staying, what’s going, and what’s getting refurbed. It has been a massively overwhelming task, but worthwhile. Why? Because every piece of content on this new site will be purposed and strategic. Not just there for the heck of it. And that I love.
We went through some initial graffles of workflow for targeted constituent groups on campus and will refine those this week. Our task early is to wireframe the main sections. I’m headed to InDesign in a few minutes after I do some serious whiteboarding with Joel. Our bosses are crying out for visual design, and we haven’t even begun it yet. Feeling like we’re doing diligence with the importan things of content analysis, IA, and messaging/telling the story first. But today we’re feeling the crunch of getting at least a bare bones design/ideas and wireframes to at least pick apart.
I started reading Bulletproof Friday and will try to devote at least an hour a day to reading and growing in XHTML/CSS, and thinking the right ways about how we need to build this site. All this and also beginning to play around with Expression Engine. So I’m really learning…well…I don’t really know how many new things I’m taking in. But Expression Engine is a tool that I’m thinking about using for a missionary in Africa to manage her content and images. That and our church is going to EE. And I have a couple of potential clients that are asking for some sort of CMS. Of course they aren’t asking specifically for CMS, but wanting all the trappings that go with it. I’m flirting right now with Expression Engine. Looked at Plone and some other open-source options, but think that EE could be the way to go if I can invest the time to learn it as well. Man, I need a mentor to walk me through all of this…