Where the words live, and who can move them
The single biggest change is one you cannot see on the page. The words and pictures are kept apart from the layout, and the media team gets a desk of their own to edit them at.
Today, on Webflow
Webflow is a design tool with a website attached. The words for a service, the photograph beside them and the way the page is laid out all live in the same place, so a change to any of them means opening the design tool and knowing which parts are safe to touch.
The news posts, services and facilities are Webflow collections, and those collections belong to Webflow's templates. Leaving Webflow means leaving them behind, which is what we have now done, by hand, for all 85 records.
In the new site
Each service, facility, guide, news post, resource, urn and position is a record with a handful of fields: a title, a description, a banner image with a note about where the faces are so cropping never cuts them, and the words. The layout is applied once, to every record of that kind.
Change the words for Bereavement Support and the service page, the services listing and the homepage card all change together. Add a record and it has a page.
| Collection | Records | What each record holds | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | 13 | Title, description, banner, photograph, the words | Our Services and its thirteen pages |
| Facilities | 16 | Title, home it belongs to, gallery, the words | The Experience page and the four location pages |
| News | 26 | Title, date, picture, the article | News listing and each post |
| Arranging guides | 15 | Title, stage, order, the words | The six stages of Arranging a Funeral |
| Support articles | 5 | Title, description, the words | Support and Resources |
| Urns and keepsakes | 9 | Name, category, photograph, available or not | The order builder on Memorial Urns and Jewellery |
| Positions | 1 | Title, description, open or closed | Employment |
The urns are placeholders until the media team photographs the real range. Nine records are there so the order builder can be seen working.
What Sanity is
Sanity is a content desk. It is a website of its own where the media team signs in, sees the records above as a list, opens one, edits it in a form, and presses Publish. About a minute later burstows.com.au has rebuilt itself with the change, and the new version is live around the world.
There is no design tool in it. An editor can change every word and every picture and cannot move a column, because the layout is not kept there. That is what makes it safe to hand to the team without training them as designers, and it is why a mistake in the desk can only ever be a wrong word, never a broken page.
What is wired to Sanity today
The recruitment database. When someone applies through the employment page, their application is saved into Sanity as a record with thirteen fields, and their CV is attached to it. The team sees applications as a list they can filter and sort.
| Field | Choices |
|---|---|
| Full name, email, phone | Free text |
| Positions of interest | Funeral Director · Funeral Director's Assistant · Administration & Reception · Catering & Hospitality · Mortuary Care · Audio Visual & Print · Grounds & Maintenance · Drivers & Fleet · General Expression of Interest |
| Preferred location | Toowoomba · Dalby · Warwick · Gatton · Any location |
| Employment type | Full time · Part time · Casual |
| Availability | Weekdays · Weekends · Evenings · Overnight on call |
| Earliest start date, why Burstows | Date and free text |
| CV | PDF or Word, up to 3 MB |
| Triage status | New · Shortlisted · Interviewed · On file · Declined |
| Submitted | Date and time, set automatically |
A hidden field catches automated spam before it reaches the desk. The form itself is already on the new site; what it is waiting for is a Sanity account in Burstows' name, which is the first thing we set up once the site is approved.
What moves in next
Once the site is approved, we build the desk out: the seven collections above move into it, along with every page banner, and from then on the media team edits all of it in one place. Until then the records live as files inside the site itself, where we can change them for you in minutes.
Who can do what
- Editors, the media team: every word, every picture, every news post, every application in the recruitment list. Cannot change layout.
- Administrator, Rory: adds and removes editors, holds the account.
- Yoonet: layout, features and the code, always through GitHub so there is a record, always through a preview first.