Planning a Web Site - Week 1

The first step in any successful website is planning. In chapter one of his book, MacDonald discusses some basic ideas about websites and presents some of the first decisions to be made about the site as a whole. I am going to go through his broad subject categories and discuss how I will be addressing those topics in my site for this class.

1. Types of sites
The many types of website accessible on the Internet include: personal, blogs, resume, topical, event based, promotion, and business. I will be constructing a business-style site for the media center I work in at Harmony High School.

2. Understanding your audience
This encompasses several factors, including hardware issues such as monitor variations that affect color and fonts, connection speeds, browser-specific features such as plug ins, and other technical complications. In order to avert this, it is suggested that designers check the functionality of their sites on a variety of web browsers and operating system platforms.

3. The lifespan of your site
At the outset, it is important to know the intended lifespan of your site, in order to plan for regular updates and new content. If you design a site poorly at the outset, it becomes very difficult to change content easily, leading to quickly outdated content that discourages users.

4. Practice good design
Some of the tips given in this section include stay simple, be consistent, and know your audience. These are important because they help the designer stay focused on the essential purpose for the final site: usability. Simplicity, consistency, and end user satisfaction are key elements in planning a good site.

5. Ingredients of a web site
- Web pages: my site will consist of 5-6 individual pages
- Web space: for the purposes of this project, I will use my USF web site to host the pages
- Domain name: at this point, a domain name is unnecessary
- Web design tools: I am currently looking into Kompozer and Adobe Dreamweaver
- Hyperlinks: Not only a requirement of the project, but an integral part of any website
- Extras: search engine listing, establishing forums, animations, audio and video

All of these factors contribute valuable knowledge to the planning process of building a site framework, and determining how to allocate information across a variety of pages. I am ready to get started, which is the next chapter!