Most websites are all about the content – there is information of some kind to be communicated – that is the reason for the website! It could be “buy our products”, “hire our services” or “this is important public information”, but whatever the message, most websites are there to communicate content effectively.
In a typical WordPress project, Angry Creative might offer planning, design and development services, but we wouldn’t create all the content from scratch too – to do that would mean we knew your business and goals as well as you do (which is unlikely!). So at some point, there needs to be a handover of content from you (the client) to us so that we can add it to the website.
What content do you need?
The first step is to get a sitemap together that outlines the pages and sections that your website will contain. If you don’t have one yet, see this article to find out how to do it or contact us and we’ll talk you through the process. The sitemap will tell you what content you need, but it most likely contains:
- Text content
- Images
- Other types of content such as video, podcasts, embeds of various kinds
Why is it important to hand over content correctly?
Usually we only upload enough content to show all the design, templates and functionality required. We can use temporary content for that, but if you give us your content to use, the site will be that much closer to going live when you first see it. So what is the right way to hand over content?
Text
Any text content you send us should be easy to copy and paste from. Word processors such as Word, Google Docs or Apple’s iWork are all good tools to use here – you can then add headings, bold/italicised emphasis, links and images to the text to show us how you want the page to look. Please note that if you include images in documents, you will also need to provide us with a separate file for each image (as below).
Images and graphics
You should provide graphic files (such as logos) in an editable digital vector format. You should provide photographs in a high-resolution digital format. If you choose to purchase stock photographs, we can propose services. If you want us to search for photographs for you, we can estimate for that.
Video
If you want video on your site, we highly recommend using services like YouTube, Vimeo or similar and then embedding it on your WordPress site: it’s generally a much better experience for you and your users. You’ll need to upload your videos and send over the links to us so we can include them. If they’re private videos, we’ll need either embedding instructions or login details for your account too.
Existing website content
If all your content is on another website, or indeed a WordPress site, that’s even better – just point us to the page! If your current site is already in WordPress, we’ll generally ask for a database dump so we can import the content exactly as it is. Let us know if this is the case – it could save you days of work!
Do I need to have all content 100% finalised before you can start?
If you have 100% finalised content, that’s great! If not, finalise things as far as possible. We’ll add all the content you submit and fill in the gaps with available content. Once the staging site has been made available to you, you will be able to edit and finalise the site content directly on the website.
How should I organise and provide you with the content?
The best way we have found to structure the content is to create a folder hierarchy that matches your sitemap and to add documents, images and instructions to each folder. Then add everything to a ZIP file and send it using Dropbox, Google Drive, email or WeTransfer (or other file transfer service).
If you have other suggestions, let us know – as long as it’s clear and easy to figure out what’s what and to transfer it, most of it will work.
Summing up
In this article, we’ve looked at what kind of content makes up a typical website and how to prepare and hand it over to Angry Creative in the most efficient way. That leaves us more time to actually create a great website for you!