A Look at GatherContent

Water, two cups of coffee, a great pair of jeans, and GatherContent; what do all these things have in common? We kind of can’t live without any of them.

I know, that sounds like quite the overstatement. But if you're working in the web design industry, the largest bottleneck within a given project is almost always in the content management stage. It’s an even bigger nightmare once you finally get those 28 individual Word documents prepped, and then the client emails you their latest version. Between figuring out the best way to get the content from client to agency, to worrying about what goes where, GatherContent has set up shop during an important period in web design.

So, fellow content-philes, why do we love GatherContent over other tools (or unorganized processes with Word)?

​1. Building out your very own, custom content hub with a basic framework.

For fellow designers that know what I'm talking about, this will likely mimic your current wireframe structure. This not only helps you to map out, bit by bit, what pieces of content you'll most likely need, but it will make the process simple on the client-side as well.

2. Making communication easier via options for a guideline section.

Communication is key in these projects, and if you don't see your client every day, it's even harder to convey what goes where in large web projects. Within each GatherContent page build, you can add a special "Guidelines" drag and drop section to help the user get a better visual for what you mean when you say "insert H2 snippet here".

3. The ability to map out the content by type, according to how it lays on the page.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but with GatherContent, both users and webmasters alike get the option to create an upload hub for large docs, images, videos and the like. We also get the option to edit the page to fit the project as it changes, which is great for those larger projects with many users involved.

4. Eliminating the endless search for emails to find what the client mentioned that one time.

The system also allows for users with proper access to leave comments, should questions arise during the content migration process.

5. Revisions.

You don’t have to figure out if homepageNEW.doc or homepageFINAL.doc has the latest changes. GatherContent keeps track of every change (plus who made them, and when!).

GatherContent has been a life-saver for us on a daily basis. Web designers, if you're not already using it, you're missing out.