Re: Quick Terminology Poll

Hi,

I thinkt he key thing is that I am trying to come up with a key set of 
names that the average, non techie user will be familiar with

> > Section - a group of pages/part of a site (I guess I could also use 
> > Folder - undecided on this) 
> If your site is dynamic, then using Folder could confuse because  all 
> the pages would be dynamically generated. Also, in a dynamic site, you 
> will probably not have folders. 

The site is dynamic, however users can group content together into a 
'folder' that may well have it's own design and also be accessible via a 
URL along the lines of www.domain.com/foldername

> I've seen the term "channel" being used for this purpose. 

So have I but most users associate channel with something on television.

> > Content - the main textual content of a page 
> As in Raw content without any format. 

Well, raw content without the rest of the page structure around it.

> > Assets - images, media files, downloadable files associated 
> > with a site 
> > - I know some refer to this as a site's Media, but this implies more 
> > visual media as opposed to downloadable files - I prefer to group the 
> > whole lot together. 
>  
> I prefer to include content also in this term. For example, all the XML 
> files that represent news aricles. 

I am inclined to keep them seperate - assets have to be uploaded to the 
system whereas with our CMS the content is all stored in a back end db so 
is entered and edited via an online editor.

> > Template - design template as applied to a page or group of pages 
>  
> I think of template as something that pulls up different components of a 
> page and shows it to a user. For example, a page template pulls up top 
> five news items, a search box, left nav bar, right nav bar and so on. 
> These individual components could in turn have their own templates. So a 
> template is something that gives form to content. 

I think the same, however from the average user's perspective, they just 
think of it as the design of the site.

> > Layout - a predefined template for site content (e.g. 2 col format) 
>  
> I also consider layout as a specific instance of a template. However, 
> some products differentiate between layout and template in which case, 
> template contains (business) logic for putting the content together and 
> layout contains the presentation information (2 column, 3 colum etc).

I guess with the layout I am referring to the layout of the content within 
the page framework that has already been defined by the design/template.  
Normally this would be just straight linear text, but sometimes users want 
to put it in tabular format, newspaper style 2 columns, etc.
-- 
Cheers,

Julian Voelcker
Cirencester, United Kingdom