Reusable Content Solution for the Art Museum

For the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) migration and redesign we realized early on that we'd need to do content modeling for single-source, reusable content that could appear across various areas of the site and in different formats.

Translating requirements

The clients and stakeholders didn't have a clear vision at first of how they wanted their content structured, but after some back and fourth we landed on a user-centered IA and requirements for the exhibitions and events content that would need to be repeated for each instance and appear across multiple pages without requiring their staff to update the content and image on each page each time.

So we'd need a single source for the content (in SharePoint this is done via a List) and a templates with filters to display the content on various pages.

They approved this mock for the homepage for when there are two exhibitions (there were also accommodations for one and three), which along with their requirements led me to the content structure that they'd need for the List that would power the templates on the homepage, the Exhibitions landing page, and the rollup of past exhibitions by year.

Our designer's final mockup of the homepage

Structuring the content

I needed to create a content model that would accommodate all of the client's requirements (exhibition title, dates, preview image, and ability to click through for more detailed information) and would filter correctly for each page. These were the fields I came up with:

Title (usually the artist's name, but not always)
Subtitle (usually the name of the collection/exhibition)
Dates (the dates of when the exhibition is showing, stylized)
Year (to filter the dropdown on the Past Exhibitions rollup)
Image URL (a relative link to a thumbnail to preview the collection)
Status (Current, Upcoming, or Past - filters to the corresponding Exhibitions page(s))
Featured (check box to filter onto homepage)
Link (link to page about the exhibition with detailed content)
Date Data (for chronological ordering)

The List, when all filled in with content, looks like a chaotic spreadsheet. Luckily, SharePoint's editing interface (below) is a lot simpler for the user and is more like filling out a form.

Accommodating each location

With the List built and some content in place, we were ready to build and test our templates. The templates had to accommodate each page by filtering results based on whether it was featured (homepage); Current, Upcoming, or Past (Exhibitions section); and filter by year and then by the date (date data, not stylized date).

Here are two exhibitions on the homepage. They are designated as Current and Featured in the List.

Here are the exhibitions rendering on the Exhibitions landing page, which is also the Current Exhibitions page, filtering just exhibitions listed as Current.

Here are some exhibitions rendering on the Past Exhibitions page, which filters first by exhibitions marked as Past, and then filters by the Year field and further orders the content by the Date Data field.

Having the single source for the content (the List) makes it easier to manage for the user. All the other pages where the exhibitions content appears updates in real time based on the fields that filter the content in the List.

We used the same approach for the museum's events, which display the next upcoming three events on the homepage and all upcoming events on the designated Events page.

Google Sites

Report abuse