Website Usability Guidelines

Content Inventory (2 of 3)

How do you create a content inventory? For an existing site, you can get a list of all the URLs on the site from the server. If your agency's or department's Website is not all on one server, be sure to go through each server whose information is going to be part of the new site.

You can also use the site's sitemap, if it has one, to get started. But many sitemaps do not list all the pages on a site. They only give top level ones or major topics.

You can also go through the site, page by page, starting with the Homepage and following links, although that method may be too unsystematic to find all the pages on the site and some pages may in fact not be connected through the Homepage.

If you are using a content management system, you may be able to generate a report to help generate a content inventory.

How do you organize a content inventory? If you use a spreadsheet or database, you can sort the inventory by any of the categories of information you have. The primary category might be by overall topic or area so that you can see all the pages that relate to the same information.

You may also want to sort by date of last update so that you can view all of the old content on the site. You may want to review these pages to determine if they need updating.

As you can see from the list of categories, you can use the content inventory to get a handle on what is on the site and what needs to be done to different parts of the site. For a new site, you can use the planned content inventory to keep track of the developing site.