Planning Your Website
When you are new to website building, it may seem like
too much work, or too intimidating. Building a website is not too
difficult, and with a little planning, can save you time and frustration
down the line. Ensuring that you take the time to plan your website
is the best rule that all successful web designers follow, questions
to answer and items to do.
What is the purpose of your website?
What content do you want to put on your website?
Outline your website on paper
Get your things together and build!
What is the purpose of your website?
A question you need to ask yourself is, what do you want your
website to accomplish? Are you trying to organize your club? Do you
want to expand your current business to have an online presence? Are
you looking for a way to raise awareness about your non-profit
organization?
Whatever your reasons, you need to decide on what your website will
accomplish and who it is speaking to. For example, a club website
that is meant for current members, and a club site advertising their
accomplishments to the community would have very different content
and tone. Deciding on what your purpose will be will help tremendously when it
comes to building your website.
What content do you want to put on your website?
You may want to put a lot of things on your website at first, so the
best idea is to brainstorm and write down everything you want to
include. Whether it's text, images, links, features, contact forms, write it down.
Now, organize your list of content into logical groups. For example,
if you want to include your e-mail address and postal address,
you may want to group that together as part of a contact information
section.
Outline your website on paper
Using the groups you have formed in the above step, start to outline
your website. Once you have completed your outline, build a site map
that will help put your website into perspective, but also it will give
you a good idea of how your site navigation will be. Start with your
main categories and decide how you want these to connect to one
another. Try and keep things simple! Limit your main categories to
six or less. That is plenty to create a full-featured website
Get
your things together and build!
Now that you have done a good amount of planning, it's time to get
your content together and start building! Keep all your outlines and
site maps with you when you start building and anything else you
might need. If you are using your own photos, make sure you already
have them scanned and saved to your computer so they are accessible
to you and everything will come together.
Good luck! You are already half way there!
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