Organizing Content Efficiently in Sitecore XP

"Disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Just as President Eisenhower's quote espouses, having a disorganized backend for your web production team and digital strategists is going to create a large mess and result in inefficiencies. While Sitecore's primary purpose is to help improve the customer's digital experience, making sure your organization sets up its backend is vital to achieving the efficiency at scale that one seeks.

Whether you are trying to do e-commerce, personalization, or using Sitecore's marketing automation you want to make sure that you are using a standardized naming convention for all of your items. The same applies to your media library. If you are integrating a DAM solution, such as Content Hub or other competitors, this will help with organizing your media assets but you are going to still want to make sure some sort of naming convention and organization is in place.

The keys to organizing your content efficiently lie in three areas: structural layout, naming conventions, and documentation. I will elaborate on each of these below.

Structural Layout

In my many years using Sitecore, I have seen various configurations of Sitecore XP. Some are better organized than others, but there are both pros and cons to different structural layouts. I am not going to go into detail on various structural layouts here, but I will discuss two possible variations.

The first is organizing all of your content globally. This means that every component that you create and its variations, can be used across your site on any page. Doing this in a global folder makes this easier on the web producer to pick and apply these components across your site. However, because everything is can be used globally it makes for the need to use detailed organization and naming conventions. You may have numerous folders and numerous components within those folders. This style of organization can be helpful if you want to use a component that is being employed somewhere else without having to recreate it.

Another way to organize your content is by having a data folder that lives directly under the page level. Each page has its on data folder and the content for that page lives there. This is a very good way to organize your content because all a web producer or if you have a new contractor on your team has to do is open up the carrots under the page node and there live the components for the page. This allows for you to be a bit less detailed because each page is unique and would have its own unique folder. A drawback to this style of organization is that you need to recreate the same component multiple times for each specific instance because the components are not being used globally.

There are other ways to layout your backend. Work with your IT lead to choose the one that works best for your team. It is not one size fits all.

Naming Conventions

Regardless of whether you are new to Sitecore or a seasoned pro, it is crucial to make sure your organization develops a naming convention that you adhere to and you hold your team to. This is extremely important because the slightest deviation from this could cause chaos. It become even more important if you are using contractors occasionally or if your team has some turnover that these standards are in place. Why you might say? It could be almost impossible for them to locate items quickly or even at all, which brings down your efficiencies.

There are many ways that you can name your content and it is best to do it for how your organization is planning to use it. What works for one organization may not work for another. That said, if you are going organize your content structure with data items directly below each page vs. having one global area with folders to hold items, there are better ways to do one vs. the other.

If you are planning to have the ability to use every component everywhere, than creating items that can be used globally is important. The naming conventions should take into account that they could be used in multiple locations so naming something "Content Block 1" might not work because it is not specific enough. You may need to employ a more detailed name like About Us - Content Block 1 or if name it after the section if the page has sections.

This approach for global items where you need to be more specific and detailed in your naming convention, might be too detailed if you are organizing your content directly under each page. Many organizations do this and take this approach, which is definitely much easier for contractors. In this instance, you can get away with a general name like "Content Block 1" because it will be the only one in the folder and used for that page. This helps with placement for someone new who might come in they can easily find the content and know where to update it on the page.

Documentation

Document, document, document. Your organization and web production team should already be doing this by default, by everything should be documented. Whether you are using a tool like Confluence or Sharepoint or something similar, you should document your components, what versions you are using, what your naming conventions are, where items live, etc. This helps both your current web production team, but also helps those who work with you and you collaborate with frequently, such as UX designers, IT, brand, etc. It gives you the peace of mind that if someone new (whether new to the team, or new to the organization) can easily or without too much difficulty read your documentation and make a good decision to move forward. Not doing this regularly is the fatal flaw for most organizations when it comes to being inefficient.