1. Information Architecture
One of the most important things to a successful Sitecore implementation is a solid information architecture. This gives the content author direction and keeps things organized, which is important for long term manageability. We do this by understanding the client's needs and wants through discovery meetings. We, then, structure and develop the content tree according to different page types, content types, organizational items and even structural items.
2. Help Text
Adding help text to fields is a great way to guide the content author on what to enter. Whether that is adding recommended sizes to image fields or some descriptive text, it will make content entry easier for a new trainee to hop in and understand what is needed for that specific field.
3. Compatible Renderings
Adding compatible renderings are a great way to show different options to a user when they are piecing together a page. You would use a compatible rendering if you want to replace your current rendering with another that uses the same data source type (or no data source at all). A good example is most Sitecore implementations will have a variety of call-to-actions; call-to-actions will look different for the end user but usually consist of the same data structure like an Image, text and a link. Using a compatible rendering allows a user to swap between these different call-to-actions quickly to see what they feel looks best on the page.
4. Branch Templates
Using branch templates is a great way to structure data and the flow of your site. The current project I’m working on is heavy into localization, which means there is one global site with multiple child sites. Those child sites are created from a branch template so we ensure that the structure stays the same across each child site. Branch templates are also useful for structuring your stored data. Usually when you create a page, you are going to have child items that populate your page. This is a great spot to use a branch template to keep pages and data consistent across your site. So when you create a new page, you will get a child folder named something like “_Content," and from there, you would use your branch to create other commonly used data folders like call-to-actions, Images, Forms, Rich Text, ect.
5. User Guide
Creating a user guide is another great tool to ensure your team and client expectations are cohesive. Personally, I like to have developers add to the user guide after each rendering they complete, which gives the QA teams full knowledge of how the rendering works, which also transfers over to better training the client. Providing a user guide to your client is beneficial for training purposes as well to gain an overall understanding of how the site works. In the user guide, you can include the following: roles, permissions, access rights, templates and renderings.
6. Don't copy text from word documents
One thing most content authors are unaware of when starting out, but learn quickly, is to copy and paste from Notepad, not Microsoft Word. I have seen various content editors write content in a Word document or pull the content from Excel, then attempt to copy and paste directly into a rich text editor in Sitecore. When copying and pasting from Microsoft Word or Excel, you may see odd things happen to the page and it will certainly never look as you expected it to. Sitecore rich text editors also have a "Copy from Word document" function that is very useful for this exact scenario.
7. Allowed Renderings
Defining allowed renderings is crucial for this heavy "Experience Editor" era we're living in. If you don't define the allowed rendering on each placeholder, the content author is likely to become overwhelmed, quickly. Make sure you allow specific renderings for each placeholder to ensure the content author has a defined list of renderings to choose from, rather than having to choose from every rendering. This step is imperative for directing content authors on where each rendering should be placed.
8. Standard Values
Standard values provide initial values upon creation for all items based on a given data template or structure; each template can have a standard values item, where that item can contain a standard value for each field in the data template and each of its base templates. The following are useful for your site, which are provided by the standard values: insert options, initial workflow and layout details. In my professional career, I have found great importance on standard values when working on sites that require globalization. Specifically, in the past when working on sites requiring globalization, I would create a product template for each language and each one of those standard values would have different presentation details or different data upon initial creation. So, the United States, "English" would contain different data and renderings than China, "Mandarin." Standard values are useful for Powershell scripts since we can clone and reset items on a larger scale, if needed.
9. Define a Data source
We should always define a data source location and data source template on each rendering to help guide the content author where the data is stored and which data templates they can use for their rendering.
10. Thumbnail Images
Last but not least is the thumbnail image for each rendering. This allows the content author to see an example of the rendering. When there is no thumbnail, you are relying on the name of the rendering to hopefully give enough description. This is a quick task and should never be skipped, as it adds tremendous value for the content author.
I hope you enjoyed these 10 tips to make a content authors life easier. As a Sitecore developer, this is always a high priority to keep the content author in mind so they have great direction when building pages and more importantly, the website.
Illustration by: Content Vectors by Vecteezy
