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Designing a website is a complex process. Many people are unaware of the amount of work involved in developing a site. The actual construction of the site itself is frequently the smallest part of the process, and a lot of things are required beforehand from the site owner before construction can begin. If you consider and prepare for the development, your site implementation will proceed much more quickly.
This short list covers some of the processes that have been involved in most of the sites I've worked on. If you're unfamiliar with the process, it will give you some more information about what's in store.
Website Creation Procedure:
Analysis:
• What is your target market?
• Compare the competition and/or similar offerings by others so you don't recreate the wheel.
• Inventory the content you have available, and the media it will be delivered on.
• Inventory the data and media scope and it's disk volume.
• What will be the “malleability” of the final content; should it be update-able? Or will they be static pages with rare updates?
Design and Planning:
• Write textual content.
• Perform conceptual organizational design: content heirarchy, sections, pages, headings.
• Perform navigation design and sitemap, including informational groupings and navigation elements.
• Perform graphic design, including thematic elements, aesthetic and artistic style, choosing a subsequent typographic palette.
• Design and specify a database if needed, from a systems analysis perspective, usage perspective, and aesthetic perspective.
Finally, Actually Building the Site:
• Obtain / Register Domain Name
• Obtain Site Host
• Email contact information configured
• Create punchlist for needed material
• Format media for web
• Perform Coding for text formatting, graphics placement, and design of pages.
• Database programming if needed.
• Site testing and debugging on a variety of browsers and platforms. |
