Tag: styles

Writing and organizing your website content

Steps and tips on organizing and writing your website content.

Here are a few suggestions that I have found to be useful in organizing and writing the content for your website.

These are useful when you are first building your website or if you are doing a redesign.

  1. First – decide on the structure and hierarchy of the website.  What are your top level pages?  Your website navigation will depend on how well you organize the information. Make your top level headings general enough that you will be able to continue using this structure – and add additional pages as you need them as sub pages.
  2. I will be using MS WORD as an example of the word processing program to use as this is most common.  If you are using something else look for similar tools that you can use.
  3. Start a new document in MS Word
  4. Click on VIEW – and put a check mark next to “Document Map”  – this will then show you on the left a view of your document as a map.
  5. Click on FORMAT – STYLES – and this will show a pane on the right side of your document with a list of styles.
  6. Next – type in all the top level pages and sub pages.  Just use normal text and dont bother adding any formatting.
  7. Then click on a top level page – and highlight HEADING 1 on the styles menu and click on it.  This assigns the level 1 style to this and you will see that heading appear on your Document Map.
  8. Continue doing this for all the Level 1 headings (the top level of your structure)
  9. Then do the same thing for all the SUB PAGES – assign them as a Level 2 style.
  10. Now you have a view on the document map on the left pane, and you can easily click and access the specific pages.
  11. You now can easily move through the document and add content on the pages.

A couple of other useful things

  • Add a Table of Contents at the top of the document.  This will be a good view for people who see the print out.
  • Do the editing and draft of your content in MS Word – and then add this to the draft view of your new website.  Read it again to see for any fine tuning needed on the editing.

Remember that it is a good idea to review and update your website on a regular basis.  This helps with your website traffic, and makes sure that your website stays current with your activities.

Please contact me with any suggestions and tips that you have.