Working with content

The most important part of your website is the content, if there is nothing valuable for your target audience they won’t remain an audience for very long.

Messagepac™ provides you with the option to create content in a very flexible manner.  Your content may be structured into distinct fields or it may be completely freeform.  This section describes the use of the standard content data structure that has been adopted for the Messagepac™ platform.

Standard Content Format
 
The Standard Content Format provides a small degree of structured text and lots of freeform capability.  It is structured as follows:

• Article Title

The articles are assigned a Title to identify them to the reader.  If you are working with a news article you may want the title to be engaging, alternatively if you are presenting your products then the product name is the most logical title for the article.

• Article Introduction

Each article has a short, freeform introduction. The content of the introduction may be lengthy, but the content is typically displayed in lists to help the reader decide whether or not to read the article in greater detail and thus keeping the content to one paragraph is sound advice.

• Article Main Body

The article main body is the principal component of the content.  It is freeform in nature and can hold text, graphics, web-links and other media that you typically find on the internet.  This content is typically not presented to the reader until they request to see the entire article.

• Article Dates

Articles are usually time-bound.  Messagepac™ provides the capability to publish an article in the future and have it withdrawn automatically at a specified time.  For example you may run a special offer and wish to publish the offer from midnight next Sunday and then remove the article automatically 3 weeks later.  Setting article dates facilitates this.

Please note that the start and end dates work as follows:

1. If the start and end dates are the same the article will be available perpetually.
2. If the start date is later than the end date the article will be available perpetually from the start date.
3. If the end date is later than the start date the article will no longer be visible after the end date.

• Article Search Keywords and Description

The Messagepac™ system is heavily optimised to be accessible to search engines.  Every public article on the site is available to the search engine searching programs.  In order to allow the search engines even greater power in their analysis of your site keywords and a description are provided for every piece of content you create.

In creating keywords bear in mind that a smaller number of keywords is preferable to a long list and that the keywords will be effective only if they are used in the content of the article and better still in the title and section headings that you use.

The keywords and description are also indexed for the website’s own search capability, along with the title and freeform content that you add.

Next Article: Using the WYSIWYG Editor

Article Date: 28th July 2006

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