By Jannetta Lamourt, IDL SIG Social Media manager

Website redesign, update, remodel, makeover, or whatever one wants to call analyzing a current website and deciding what needs updating, repair, and/or new elements added to make disseminating information easier to the frequent public users of the website’s features. Ultimately, the most critical question is how to do it in the least amount of webpages downtime and the slightest frustration, aka “headache” for those involved in this process.

Why me?

Technical writers may wonder why website redesign fits our STC SIG’s general topics of interest. The answer to this question is:  modern technical writers generally produce more technical documentation as online content than strictly for print. This content features websites and is uploaded to content management systems (CMS), learning management systems (LMS), magazines, white papers, and the list goes on and on. As a content creator, it is helpful to know the basics of web design, user experience (UX), HyperText Markup (HTML), Content Style Sheets (CSS). These skills enable you to understand how your text will display in any document or page and how the users will engage with the content. For instance, are there links to additional material? Is there embedded video or sound, footnotes “clickable,” and a long document easily navigated with “jump” points? Is all content, including images, accessible to those with disabilities?

Planning

Technical writers understand that principles are behind a technical document coming together before publishing. For instance, questions asked, needs assessment, information gathered, page design, content written and edited, images created or curated. Planning a website design or redesign is a similar logical process and requires a similar structure before even one piece of the “doing” of the redesign is done.

The plan

This article is one of several over the following months as the IDL SIG website goes through a “makeover.”   The purpose is to keep our members informed of our progress and invite those interested in learning more about the work behind the scenes of web redesign to follow our progress and participate in design, coding, and practical use tutorials via Zoom and YouTube.

Steps taken /invitation

A small group of interested volunteers has begun analyzing the current site, and we meet to discuss our findings every few weeks via Zoom. To join the meetings, no one must know HTML/CSS/Word Press or other design principles or software. Please contact Jannetta Lamourt via the STC SIG SLACK channel or email at jannettalamort@gmail.com for further details.

First steps:       Site overview
Generate current site health report
Generate a current site map
Generate a “wish list” from IDL SIG leadership
Examine current plugins and themes for updates/functionality/replacement.

Upcoming:

Theme overview and other themes considered with recommendations

General layout/ New UX Site Map generated
(UX sitemap is a hierarchical diagram of pages prioritized, linked, and labeled)

Logo redesign considerations