Developing a Site - Five Key Steps

There's more to publishing a Web site than just creating a group of pages with your Web editor and sending them to your server. These five steps are offered as a summary guide for developing your site. They are: Planning, Designing, Production, Testing and Maintenance. You may not follow the steps in exactly the order listed. In fact, you will probably find yourself moving back and forth between steps in the process as your site emerges and takes form; and that's okay.

If you use the suggestions listed below, chances are you will find your site will give you the results you expect and satisfy the needs of your department, office, organization or curricular site.

1. Planning

This is a stage that needs to be carefully crafted. Unless the site under development belongs to one individual, this should be a group process that involves not only the Web developers, but key decision makers. You may even want to integrate the plan for your website with your department, office or organization's mission.

• Define your purpose

What do you want to achieve by creating a website? What are the results you expect to get? Perhaps greater visibility, accessibility, or attendance at events.

• Define your target audience

Who do you want to attract to your site; who is most important to you?

• Define a visual look

What do you want to achieve with your design? What kind of personality do you want your site to take on - should it be proper, professional or have an attitude?

• Gather current information

What information do you currently have? What information will you need to obtain?

2. Designing

Given the plan created above, those in charge of implementing the plan can now begin the design stage. Don't forget to seek feedback from the planning group for both approval and commitment at the end of this stage.

• Define your content

Make a list of items and prioritize them.

• Chart your site

From the list above, begin to categorize and subcategorize your information based on priority and function.

• Develop a file structure

Based on the chart above, begin to develop file naming standards and devise the directory/folder hierarchy for your files (more). Are there large groups of similar information? If so, group them together where it makes sense.

• Develop an interaction plan

Do you want to solicit comments? How will you get feedback?

• Choose a page layout for the top level and subsequent pages

This is the time to surf the Web! What layouts do you see that would adapt to your design? How did they accomplish the job?

• Choose HTML coding techniques, such as Style Sheets for layout, Tables for charts, Forms and JavaScript

Who is your audience? Will they have the technology to support pages with advanced HTML capabilities? If not, what techniques are you willing to give up? Are you willing to support multiple pages for different user capabilities?

• Choose a graphic scheme

What colors do you favor? With a few exceptions, 2-3 colors are plenty. Do you want a colored or white background? What color choices will you make for visited, unvisited and active links? What is the best use of photography? How will you integrate icons and other graphics?

• Don't forget basic Web design principles

Ease of navigation is a must; use graphics for a purpose and optimize them for fast downloading; don't use a technique unless you have a reason for using it.

• Seek feedback

Will the planning people approve of your design plan? Before moving on, make sure you are on track!

3. Production

This is a fun but time consuming step. As you create your prototype, you will probably need to refer to steps 1 and 2 to make sure your model fits the plan. You may need to skip ahead to step 4 to test components of the model as you progress.

• Build templates

You will need to build templates for the different levels of your site. Once a template is developed, it helps make short work of creating similar pages.

• Create graphics

Develop reusable components where possible. Keep graphics readable and as small as possible.

• Create HTML pages

Be careful in linking your pages together. Refer to your chart of files and directories so that URLs are coded correctly. If as you work, large numbers of similar files emerge, add new directories and update your chart.

• Create links

Lists of related, outside resources are very useful. Just remember, they also need to be checked periodically to make sure the links continue to work and continue to be useful.

• Build in accessibility

Be sure your pages are accessible to all users. ALL images must have alternate text. Any JavaScript capabilities must also be available without JavaScript.

• Load the pages to your webserver

Oh, what a site! Doesn't it feel wonderful to see the results of your efforts on-line?

• Seek feedback

This is just as important here as in the previous step.

4. Testing

This is a quality control step; very tedious but it must be done. Keep an eye open for typing errors along the way!

• Test on different platforms, browsers and monitors

By defining your audience in step 1, you will define how rigorous your testing should be. If your audience is solely students on this campus, you know exactly what kind and version of browser the students will be using to access your site. You will know what operating systems and display quality they will use. So, you can limit your testing to just those types of systems.

If your audience is made up of external users, you have no way of knowing their capabilities and so must use your best judgment to pick a lowest common denominator. To fully test, be sure to try your site out on both Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

Check out the latest versions of Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. For the really low end, use a Lynx text browser or screen reader.

How does your site look on a black and white monitor? To someone who is colorblind? On a narrow display such as are found on some Macintosh computers? On a 17" monitor?

• Make sure your links work

Check all the links, forms and mailtos on each page to make sure they work as intended.

• Test for accessibility

This task will become easier as new products emerge to remove the difficulty. Use a screen reader to try your pages out (more).

• Gather feedback

Use representatives of your target audience and other individuals and take their comments seriously. A comment form is an easy way to funnel feedback to the appropriate people.

• Get final approval

Once again, make sure there is approval and commitment from appropriate people.

• Make modifications and test it all over again

Chances are, there are things you didn't dream of that mattered to your audience or your planning group. Be prepared to redo what you've done until you get it right.

• Publicize your site and celebrate!

When your job is done, tell people about it. Print your Web address on your calling cards, brochures or T-shirts. Contact Yahoo!, Google or other similar services to be included in their index. Be sure to acknowledge the contributions of everyone involved.

5. Maintenance

Having a website means your job is never done. The Web changes, your information changes and your site must change with it.

• Evaluate your new site compared with your original purpose

Are your results consistent with your plan?

• Identify areas where ongoing change makes sense

Create a what's new area or schedule of events and be sure to keep it up to date.

• Add new information

You want to keep people coming back. They won't if you have stale or outdated information.

• Keep up with current Web techniques

Has the lowest common denominator of your audience risen? Are you ready to try the latest development in Web technology, where it makes sense?