Building systems that let me design every page
In Jeff Croft’s entry, Five things I’m doing to get better at web design, I came across an excellent point that I know we are going to be doing more of in the future of 9rules and that is designing pages and not templates. Jeff stats
Somewhat relatedly, I often find myself lamenting the fact that web sites are so incredibly templated. On most sites, nearly every page uses the same basic layout. We rarely design pages — we design templates. Those templates then get applied to lots of pages. On most sites, this is necessary for practical purposes. I find it limiting. When we run a feature in Sunday’s paper and it’s got a beautifully done custom layout that totally fits the story, and then I see that online it’s running in the same template as everything else, it really makes me want to cry.
Now this doesn’t mean that every single page we create (ex. blog entry) needs to have a custom layout, but whenever a new section of your site is being planned think can it be better served with a different layout. Yes, this might challenge the brain a bit more, but I find that being challenged when it comes to IA and design is when the real fun begins. However, don’t create new layouts just to create new layouts.
When I think of sites that take it upon themselves to practice this method the first site that comes to mind is Apple. Take a look at these pages:
No two are alike yet they all represent Apple products and all are within the Apple domain. What’s interesting though is that they actually serve a purpose and don’t break the flow of the site. They aren’t different just to be different. They are different because they each contain different types of information and therefore didn’t layouts work for each one.
Now I wouldn’t get too excited and try to figure out new ways to go about designing your blog because blogs aren’t deep enough in my opinion to warrant 3-4 separate layouts for pages. However, if your blog is more of a website (I know these terms start to get confusing) then sure have a go at examining each page and figuring out what works best for it.
Templates and pages…
Wisdump raises a very good point in their post Building systems that let me design every page: most websites today use templates and as a result most of the pages in the site look very much the same. This is not necessarily bad, but as they point out …
By theSandbox on November 13, 2006 7:39 am
[...] Wisdump raises a very good point in their post Building systems that let me design every page: most websites today use templates and as a result most of the pages in the site look very much the same. This is not necessarily bad, but as they point out sometimes some changes in design make the site much more attractive while keeping it usable and coherent. [...]
By Templates and pages « theSandbox on November 13, 2006 7:39 am
Hand-crafting pages wouldn’t be too hard for most blogs, however we have to have tools that support it. The majority of content management systems are designed for “efficiency,” not flexibility.
Granted, most blogs may not be deep enough to warrant hand-crafting, however that seems to be more a function of how we generally organize blogs (chronologically). We can gain significantly more depth if we organize content in a way that lets both lets the content speak and embraces the hypertextual medium (via complex interlinking). Again, we have to have tools that support and encourage methods of organization beyond chronological lists.
For larger sites using traditional content management schemes, I believe hand-crafting individual pages would be more worthwhile than the typical blog simply because each page will have a longer lifespan. In any case, I think we often treat our content and design as if it were disposable.
By J.D. Hollis on November 13, 2006 8:08 am
Well I know for WordPress and MovableType you can definitely extend the individual post pages so if you want to change the layout you definitely have the power to do so. And if no matter what if your system uses a dynamic language (PHP) the ability to manipulate a template is always there.
The whole 9rules site essentially runs off of 4 main files.
By Scrivs on November 13, 2006 11:14 am
Anyone know of a “how to” (or willing to make one) for doing something like this with WordPress? It’s a great concept (I love Joomla’s site) but it’s a bit beyond me at the moment.
By Andre on November 13, 2006 2:21 pm
[...] Building systems that let me <b>design</b> every page. [...]
By My Top 10 Web Sites » Late breaking news on November 13, 2006 3:13 pm
[...] I used Apple in a post yesterday and I get to use them again today. Don’t you think their site matches their personality? Clean design. Easy to use. Fun. [...]
By What Is Your Site’s Personality? » Wisdump on November 14, 2006 2:45 am
I already do this to a small extent with my sites, where the front page uses a completely different layout than the internal pages.
But what you are talking about is not hard at all to do with a good CMS. I’ll use Wordpress as an example (though I have a feeling it can’t quite pull it off). You would have to structure your template in a way that you have a sort of “canvas” section where individual entries go. Then you can define a specific id for the container of this section and attach a specific stylesheet to it (both using Custom Fields). All of the custom styles for this entry would apply to that id to make the canvas section unique and it would just be a matter of having your template check those custom fields and put the stylesheet in the header and the custom id on the container.
It would be more work but I can totally agree with Jeff that for sites like a high-profile newspaper, putting this extra work in for the Sunday feature is worthwhile.
By Montoya on November 21, 2006 1:56 pm
thanks paul, really something to think about….
By Nolawi on November 27, 2006 11:47 pm