Portfolio and Blogging Platforms: Structure, Content and Speed

Portfolio and Blogging Platforms: Structure, Content and Speed

This is a description of a project type we build: platforms where content is the product, and where the structure of that content decides how the site behaves.

The Challenge

A body of work needed to be presented and published regularly by people who are not developers. Off-the-shelf tools either imposed a structure that did not fit the material or carried more machinery than the project needed, and pages were slow under the weight of it.

Our Approach

Discovery looked at the material itself: what the entries are, how they relate to each other, what needs to be found by category, tag or date, and who writes and approves them. The content model came before the interface, because a platform is really a model with a publishing workflow attached.

Solution

A content system with a clear content model, authoring in Markdown or structured fields, drafts and published states, categories and related entries, and templates that render every page consistently. Administration is limited to what authors actually need, so publishing stays a five-minute task.

Technology

Server-rendered pages with caching, so the site serves prepared HTML rather than building a page on every request, plus a media pipeline that stores images where they are used.

Implementation

Content migrated in batches and checked page by page, addresses kept stable for anything already linked, and the old publishing path kept running until the new one was proven.

Results

Publishing effort and page performance are measured against the previous setup; figures are published only where they have been verified and approved.

Building a publishing platform? Tell us about your project and we will start with your content model.

Project details in this article are deliberately general. Client names, verified results and references are published only with the client's approval.