Web
A website your team can actually edit
Written by
Jake Moreno
Published
Reading time
4 min
Built so the team can change it themselves
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A new website looks its best on launch day. The real test comes six months later. By then the team has added forty news posts, changed the prices twice and launched a product we never saw. We design for that day as much as for the first one.
So every site we build in Framer is made to be edited by the people who run the business. Nobody on the client side should need a developer, or us, to change a sentence.
Built from parts, then pages
We start in Framer with components, and only then build pages. A component is a block like a hero, a product row or a quote. Each one has a small set of options that make sense, such as image left or image right, light or dark.
When the team adds a page, they stack parts that already work together. They cannot pick a new font size by accident, because the text styles are set once for the whole site. Colors work the same way.
The CMS does the repeat work
Anything that repeats lives in the CMS: news, projects, products, people, events. The team fills in a form with fields we name in their own words. A field called Short line under the title gets better results than one called Subtitle 2.
Each field has a character limit that matches the design. If a headline runs past 60 characters, the editor says so before the page breaks.
Tint and Kestrel. The Tint team adds new stockists each month, and Kestrel posts every new project itself.
What we lock and what we leave open
A site that anyone can change in any way will drift. A site where nothing can change gets replaced in a year. We draw the line with the client in the first week, and we write it down.
Open to the team
All text, on every page.
Images, with a crop guide for each slot.
New pages, built from the existing parts.
Every CMS collection: add, edit, hide and reorder.
Menu links, footer links and where the forms send.
Locked by default
The grid, the type scale, the colors and the layout inside each component stay locked. So do the settings that affect search and speed: the page title pattern, image sizes and redirects. The team can still ask us to open something later. We only want each opening to be a decision someone made.
The one-hour training
Training happens a week before launch, on the real site with real content. We book one hour with the people who will edit it, usually two or three of them. We record the session, and they keep the recording.
Twenty minutes on text and images: change, crop, replace.
Thirty minutes on the CMS: add a post, hide it, schedule it.
Thirty minutes on new pages made from existing parts.
Twenty minutes on publishing, and on how to undo a change.
Twenty minutes on the team’s own list of questions.
The last part is the most useful. We ask the team to bring the three edits they expect to make most often. Then they make them, while I watch and keep my hands off the mouse.
The first 30 days
After launch, the team can write to us with any question for 30 days, and we reply within one working day. Most questions arrive in the first week. By week three they usually stop.
Northwind, during festival week
The Northwind site was the hardest test we have had. A film week changes by the hour. A print arrives late, a guest misses a flight, a screening sells out at noon.
We built the program as one CMS collection. Each film has a night, a time, a sold out switch and a short line for last-minute notes. The festival team ran it from a laptop at the venue. Over six nights they made 23 changes to the program, and none of them needed us.
The Northwind home page. Each night below the headline is a CMS item the festival team edits.
We moved a whole night of films at ten on a Thursday evening. Nobody had to call Jake.
Sarah Miller, festival director, Northwind
Questions to ask any web studio
Whoever builds your next site, ask these before you sign.
Who on our team will edit the site, and how long will it take them to learn?
Which parts can we change, and which parts are locked?
Is the training recorded, and do we keep it?
What does a small change cost after launch, if we need you?
Our own answers, with the time and a starting price for a site in Framer, are on the services page.
Studio notes, once a month. Work in progress, books we like, no sales pitches.
