Restructuring and optimizing the Planet 4 Handbook
The revamp of the documentation site to better reflect the product status and support the community
* This post has been written in collaboration with Andrada Radu
Most sites go through a reorganization process to improve SEO. The reorganisation of the P4 documentation site, aka the Handbook, lies behind the need to better reflect the state of the product and the contribution opportunities and some content and design refresh.
First of all, the current scope of the Handbook is to show people how to manage a P4 website, not to implement one (which was the original purpose of the site). Secondly, the community’s feedback from the annual survey indicated the need for the site to be better organized and have its design improved.
Lastly, Planet 4 sites are also going through a process of delivering a new Information Architecture and Navigation, so we took this window of opportunity and started thinking about reorganizing the Handbook as well.
To ship the new version of the Handbook, the team undertook a 3-stage project, Discovery, Concept and Rollout, here's a recap of each 👇
#1: Discovery: mapping existing information
A content audit was carried out, including analytics and taxonomy analysis, a design audit, some benchmarks on other documentation sites and research on how to develop the project.
Firstly, we looked at Analytics to understand how the content is consumed by the community, which are the most searched queries and the top visited pages or sections on the site.
Then, we looked at the content types and came up with some layouts for the future content, to be more easily revised.
Thirdly, we mapped the structure of the site and tried to categorize the content to see how it would fit under a more hierarchical structure — in the past we organized the content based on a more horizontal approach, based on tags.
Fourthly, we extracted a sitemap and analyzed each page, for which we decided where it should sit under the new structure and what needs to be done — to be rewritten, archived, moved or updated.
2. Concept: brainstorming on design and site structure
Looping in the Planet 4 Design team and 2 friends from the github volunteering program, we went through some suggestions on how to improve the (outdated) structure of the website and its key design elements.
We revisited the search command, the icons, the page layouts and the whole site taxonomy, coming up with a completely new site architecture, which now focuses very much on the key goal of the site (= provide material to learn how to use P4) and to give quick access to the community engagement opportunities.
We also performed a design analysis, suggested improvements were organized in the following areas: navigation, brand, styles and media (some changes regarding the navigation and styles were covered by the new IA & Navigation for all P4 websites redesign).
3. Rollout: site restructure and content updates
All that was left to do was to actually implement the changes on the site. We did a trial run on the staging site and then applied the changes to the production site. All this of course had to be done manually 🤯 as no script takes care of content quality!
Besides updating the full list of icons with these brand new sets (artwork by Houssam), it took us quite some time to adjust texts, guides and screenshots, the real challenge of a documentation site is not to launch it, but to keep it updated!
Even though overall we are happy with the final results, the fact that P4 is conceptualized as an engagement platform and not as a documentation tool made things a bit difficult. In fact, refactoring the site to fulfill this alternative scope was tough!
A special mention and a shoutout
None of this piece of work could have been possible without the determination and passion of Andrada Radu, who had to leave the project to pursue a new, exciting step in her career. To her goes the biggest THANK YOU a team can share and the best wish for a wonderful future ✌️ 💚
With Andrada leaving, a vacancy for a Documentation and Training Coordinator will soon be posted, to keep evolving the P4 Handbook and bring even more enthusiasm and innovative ideas!
As usual, holler at planet4-pm-group@greenpeace.org or in the comments below for any thoughts or suggestions on this open and wonderful project that is Planet 4.
