It is important that you maintain some sort of journal for your website. Don't confuse a site journal with a site outline. Your journal is a collection of your ideas, your thoughts and whatever you want to remember.

I use a steno notebook for my journal. In it I jot down ideas when they pop into my head. Believe me it pays to do this. Of course any type of website diary will accomplish the same thing. Keep track of your ideas in whatever form you find to be the most convenient for you.

Ideas are like panning for gold. Some of the ideas you come up with will never prove themselves worthwhile but there will be those nuggets of insight that may well be the difference between success and failure. If you don't have a method of recording your ideas they may be lost forever.

Starting a journal

One of the best ways to plan a website is to see what others are doing with their sites. You will find a wealth of ideas for website design in the work of others on the web. Don't copy the work of other webmasters but use it like a springboard to develop your own ideas.

For starters pick out an impressive website that you have visited and examine it for the following attributes;

What is the color scheme and layout?
How is navigation accomplished?
What is the content?
How is the content presented?

Write down anything that you believe makes this website so good and any ideas that you might want to use yourself. Do this with several websites until you are ready to begin the design of your site. Soon you will have more ideas than you can use. Include your own ideas along the way and in time your journal will become your best friend.

- Secrets of Successful Websites

Building on the work of other webmasters

When the internet was young sharing ideas and information was the norm. Webmasters willingly shared their ideas with each other. As the World Wide Web grew some unscrupulous people literally stole the work of others and foisted it off as their own work. Soon the original innocence of the web was tainted by these sorry souls and today the internet crawls with the germs of copyright infringement and criminal wrongdoing.

The Internet will never regain its original innocence. But, we can keep the small part of it that we control honest and still see our dreams of success come true. Don't copy the work of others, build on the work of others. Good ideas are like seeds. They grow of their own accord into all sorts of new forms. Good Luck!

Check out the webmasters article archive.

Home

Analyze

Organize

Develop

Implement

Maintain

Site Map

Index