Baker Mark. Every Page Is Page One: Topic-Based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web

XML Press, 2013. — 275 p. — ISBN: 978-1-937434-29-8.The Web changes how people use content; not just content on the Web, but all content. If your content is not easy to find and immediately helpful, readers will move on almost at once. We are all children of the Web, and we come to any information system, including product documentation, looking for the search box and expecting every search to work like Google. There is no first, last, previous, next, up, or back anymore. Every Page is Page One.For technical communicators, this Every Page is Page One environment presents a unique challenge: How do you cover a large and complex product using only topics, and how do you enable your readers to find and navigate topic-based content effectively?
In this ground-breaking book, Mark Baker looks beyond the usual advice on writing for the Web, and beyond the idea of topic-based writing merely as an aid to efficiency and reuse, to explore how readers really use information in the age of the Web and to lay out an approach to planning, creating, managing, and organizing topic-based documentation that really works for the reader.Every page is page one
Why do we still write books?About the bookContent in the Context of the Web
Include it all. Filter it afterward
Just Google it
The long tail
Authority and experience
Aggregation and curation
Filter it afterward
The Distributed Nature of Content on the Web.
How we use the Web
Dynamic semantic clustering
Information Architecture Top Down
Book navigation
The trouble with TOCs
Curriculum versus classification
The limits of hierarchies
The cultural bias toward hierarchies
The rise of the Frankenbooks
Faceted navigation
The limits of classification
Where top-down works
Information Architecture Bottom Up
A web of subject affinities
Irregular subject affinities
Subject affinities are not citations
Topics as hubs
The flattening problem.
Broader, deeper, more dynamic
Should we abandon top-down navigation?
The role of lists
Characteristics of Every Page is Page One Topics
What is a Topic?
Building-block topics
Presentational topics
Every Page is Page One topics
Economics and the evolution of topics
DITA and Information Mapping
Topics and the Web
Every page is still page one even if the reader reads several
Characteristics of EPPO topics
EPPO Topics are Self-contained
Self-contained, not all alone
The information scent of self-contained topics
EPPO Topics have a Specific and Limited Purpose
The scope of a topic
Task-based writing
Derived purpose
Defining the purpose of a topic
Topic purpose vs. user purpose
Purpose and topic size
Decision support and the reader’s purpose
Purpose and findability
EPPO Topics Conform to a Type
The evolution of topic types
Discovering and defining topic types
Concept, task, and reference reconsidered
EPPO Topics Establish their Context
Establishing context
Context and the imprecision of search
EPPO Topics Assume the Reader is Qualified
Reader dependencies vs. subject dependencies
Determining the qualified reader
Choosing the level of understanding
Avoid arbitrary labels
Qualification and findability
EPPO Topics Stay on One Level
Books change levels at the author’s fiat
Keeping topics on one level
EPPO Topics Link Richly
Links and the democratization of knowledge.
Linking and findability
Writing Every Page is Page One Topics
Writing Every Page is Page One Topics.
Textbooks vs. user assistance
Writing topics
The question of style
Concerning reference information.
Concerning tutorials
Concerning videos
Every Page is Page One Topics and the Big Picture
Books and the big picture
The priority of the big picture
Writing the big-picture topic
Finding the end of the string
Pathfinder topics
Sequence of Tasks vs. Sequence of Topics
Working backwards
EPPO and Minimalism
EPPO as a platform for minimalism
Is EPPO minimalist?
Minimal vs. comprehensive
Structured Writing
The varieties of structured writing
Benefits of computably structured writing
Structured writing and bottom-up organization
Metadata
The meaning of metadata
Topics should merit their metadata
Metadata comes first
Linking
Crowdsourced links
Soft linking based on subject affinities
Soft linking and list generation
Reuse
Reuse on the Web
Static vs. dynamic reuse
Other forms of reuse
Reuse, linking, and interactive pages
Making the Case for Every Page is Page One
EPPO and resource constraints
EPPO and continuous delivery
EPPO and content change
EPPO and content aging
EPPO and agile methodologies
EPPO and content management
EPPO and PDF/help
EPPO and content marketing
EPPO and DITA
EPPO and wikis
Making the case for technical communication on the Web
Afterword: EPPO, but Not for Everything