If you are designing a site for a client, you will need to know the answers to the preceding questions as well as what are their website goals. Do they have a logo they want you to use, do they have specific colors in mind, do they want to include phone and fax numbers on their pages? If this is your own business site these are questions you should also answer.

Website Goals

Personal websites

When creating a personal website, such as one providing links to other sites, it is considered good netiquette to contact the site owners and let them know you are linking to their pages. An advantage to this is that often they will provide a reciprocal link to your site! If you are using someone else's graphics and/or pictures, you should request their permission and plan on providing a credit link somewhere on the page where they are displayed.

Are you going to have a message forum on your site? Are you going to have an e-mail list for informing visitors of updates or new content? These are all things you need to consider...and make note of in your website journal.

Personal Website

Types of Websites

What content (data, graphics, photos, etc.) will be included?

This is the big job...gathering all the content that you want to include on your website. Are you going to use photos? What kind of graphics do you want? And what information or data are you putting online! Are you going to provide tutorials? Right now, just make a list of the items you think you will want to have on your website...you don't need to gather it all together yet.

Make notes about what you need to do such as scan photos or documents, locate or create graphics, write tutorials, sort and organize data. This is a good time to create folders or binders for your website project so that you can keep the content organized.

How to Organize a Website

You might need one folder for Graphics, one for Photos, one for Data, one for Tutorials and one for Miscellaneous information. Your content will determine the folder titles you need. Don't let all this overwhelm you...it will all fall into place.

Importance of Website Content

Planning your website

Time spent on this most important phase of website design will pay dividends in the long run. The planning that you do now will make things much easier once your website is online.

There are a multitude of details that go into the design of a professional site and solid planning in the early stages of design will help eliminate problems down the road. Remember to spend as much time as necessary planning your website.

Web Development and Design Techniques

Planning and organizing are the most crucial steps in designing a website. Once you have a clear picture of what you are trying to say it will be easier to devise a plan to present this information to your visitors. Planning your website is the key to creating a website that is robust and easy to maintain.

Website Strategies that Work!!!