Single Source Content (also known as Single Source Publishing) is a content management method where a source of content (aka “the source of truth”) is published in one place and leveraged across different forms of media, digital properties, and websites at the same time. It allows users to update content in one central location, ensuring consistency and automatic updates across all platforms where it is shared.
Rationale
Aligned with the soon-to-be-launched updated Website Optimization Strategy, this approach assists in creating a single source of truth for all priority content across our digital ecosystem; it ensures a seamless user experience across websites and digital applications; and it improves overall content authority and search engine optimization (SEO). For example, duplicate pages compete with one another, reducing their reach; a single source simplifies content management (saving time and reducing errors); it builds a strong content taxonomy (a content classification and back-linking system which assists tools like AI web crawlers to find the right and related content).
Benefits
- Improves institutional content searchability
- Increases content authority and trust
- Aids in content governance and management
- Optimized for digital crawlers and systems
- Avoids target audience confusion
- Strengthens institutional voice and branding (for example, aligning with Style Guide)
Applications
York University is currently leveraging this approach for several priority content mediums both locally (on the specific website environment) and globally (on the institutional web properties). The main ones include:
- News/YFile/Faculty and divisional stories: Central source for either internal or external news across the institution. Via our news or toolset modules, website owners can pull stories/images from the original source and link it to their website. This is achieved by easy-to-use, zero-maintenance automated feeds filtered via categories or tags (like on the HR Self Serve Page under Employee news: https://www.yorku.ca/uit/hrselfserve/) or manually shared by copying the URL (like on the York homepage: https://www.yorku.ca/)
Note – if you are manually pulling a news article from an original source you should not duplicate the post on your website and instead just copy the headline and date and link to the original. If you would like a News or YFile News feed added to your website, please connect with cpadigit@yorku.ca for more information. - Faculty Profiles: Central source for Faculty profiles. This project is still in development but will allow website owners to pull feeds onto their pages from the Discover York application via tags, categories or affiliations. More coming soon on application.
- Institutional Events Calendar: Central source for public institutional events. Via two website modules (side bar: https://www.yorku.ca/digitalexperiencehub/modules-library/module-6/ & full calendar: https://www.yorku.ca/digitalexperiencehub/modules-library/module-8/) website owners can pull events via tags, categories or departments onto their website. These events will also be shown to the larger institutional calendar and allow other departments to feature events that they relate to their audience. For example, during Fall Open House each Faculty can add the same event to their feeds on their website vs having to create their own version.
Additionally, some events listed on the institutional events calendar receive additional promotion through YFile. - Reusable Blocks: These blocks are leveraged both locally via reusable blocks (https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-create-a-reusable-block-in-wordpress/) and globally (sitewide alert system: https://www.yorku.ca/digitalexperiencehub/resources/alerts/) so website owners can link back to the same content and often content owners with authority to publish on other website are empowered to do so.
- Third Party Embedding: These include YouTube Videos, ISSUU PDF Viewer, Curator Social Content Feeds, and other HTML based embed features. As part of our Website Optimization Strategy and Content Strategy we encourage people to add these where it makes sense vs house media/HTML directly on the website to improve page speed and performance. More details of these can be found in the technical resources: https://www.yorku.ca/digitalexperiencehub/resources/
- Content Development: As part of our content development framework, we encourage website owners to determine the content owner vs content amplifier before creating and adding content to a website. This will allow you to map out the content on your page, identify the user journey to direct to the content owner, allowing you to focus your website on your owned content. See more details on the approach to content development: https://www.yorku.ca/digitalexperiencehub/writing-checklist/
Next Steps
Looking to leverage some of the single source integration currently available at York University? Contact us at cpadigit@yorku.ca for more information.