Content Isn't Just Text, is it?

September 08, 2008

I love talking with people about the web and hearing what they think is important to a website. Many times I hear things like “content is king,” which is possibly true… On the other hand it’s often difficult to conceptualize that. Don’t worry, I can explain.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people understand that statement to mean that text is the only thing that matters on your website. While text is absolutely important that should not mean that included imagery should be considered as something other than content. (Not CSS rendered backgrounds and such, actual images included with the content.)

Take for example the website of a photographer. The site may not even have 500 words scattered throughout but arguably the content is still there. If it weren’t we wouldn’t look at the site, we would just say “there’s nothing here!” and close the browser.

It goes the other way as well. Without text it’s difficult for an image to stand on its own. If we went to a site without any text we would wonder what it was all about and why we were there.

That doesn’t mean that in the case of the photographer’s site that every image needs to be surrounded by a lengthy explanation. In that example a small amount of text often speaks more than a longwinded essay. By labeling the page “My Trip to Africa” or “Photos of People” we get the message quicker than if we had to sort through a block of text about how the photos were taken and for what purpose.

Ultimately it’s all about these two things: