Digital Wild West

Website | Planning | Introduction

Planning a website is as difficult as you wish to make it. Simple is a good start.

This is the creative phase. No matter how keen you are to start, spend a few days reviewing these issues before taking action.

Purpose

This entire section on ‘planning’ is not formal, more a bag of ideas. With such diversity of website designs, possible website functions, and peoples’ ideas and reasons, precise planning belongs with large specialist development teams, not in this small website tutorial.

As you learn, your ‘purpose’ will change. Your purpose is initially the thought, or vision, that popped into your mind. Or it might be a precise destination invoked by a business imperative. ‘Purpose’ will always be a moving target.

Business plans are universal (and compulsory) for borrowing money and you should not avoid this step if you are risking serious money. If it is ’small’ money, with failure an acceptable option, skip the business plan ‘under caution’, using the website design as a ‘proxy plan’.

Visualize the finished website over a week or two while composing the sections on paper. Let each activity modify the other. Keep asking "what am I trying to achieve?"

Start writing immediately (using any writing software, or even hand-written notes. Your visualized, planned concept will change (as will the purpose, above). During the creation of the very first pages of DigitalWildWest.com I realized Section Two should change from "Internet Security" to full-blown "Personal Security". This created a lot of ‘back-peddling’ and much work.

Problems

Expect problems. They will be mostly due to your lack of planning. That is not prejudging you, but few people can visualize the final composition of a website any more than a research project or new vehicle design. Those few (fortunates) who can grasp the material and lay it out perfectly first time, can still decide their original choices were no longer relevant (for personal OR external circumstances).

No-one can avoid technical problems - typically harddisk failure losing a month of valuable work. Preventative backup planning can minimize this (that point being a vital component of section two, Security, on DigitalWildWest.com).

Renaming files - The task of updating ’site-wide’ links when a file is renamed grows exponentially - and so do the risks.

Reorganizing folders - Folder names need changing, with the same consequences of the previous and next points. Folders are not needed on a website, but allow you to keep the files in tidy containers. Webservers don’t care.

Broken Links - This illustration shows clearly my lack of forethought creating a nightmare of broken links. In only the first week of development with a very small number of

Opening par pages the task of fixing links is almost beyond an individual’s capacity without Dreamweaver’s site-wide management.

Preparation

Environment - This will be a place of study, like any educational activity you might have done.

Equipment - Section One (computer repairing/toughening) and Section Two (Security) are devoted to this. Summary? Ensure your computer can handle the software you have chosen, in advance! Secure your computer against online threats in all their forms.

Backup - Plan and prove a backup strategy. Losing an hour of work can be almost devastating at times. Losing your website is far worse. I will leave it for you, in this précise, to imagine all the ways one can "lose a website".

Domain name/s - You cannot ‘practice’ using a paid web hosting without a registered domain name. You can, however, practice in a limited but effective manner with a free hosted account.

Website creation - Start writing your content immediately with any tools at your disposal. It can easily be transferred to empty web pages as convenient. Writing now clarifies your thoughts and concepts of where your chosen subject is leading.

Possibilities

Free web hosting - Get one, and today. Start fiddling with the web pages. Write something, make some menus, add pictures. Break it and fix it.

If you have more ideas than money and time allow, the free website is a quick starter and makes your thinking conform to the restraints of web publishing, something that eventually needs confronting as you become job wise in this realm.

There is no reason why your smaller hobby or family websites shouldn’t be hosted free, if for no other reason than practice.

Blogs (also free) - Start blogging today. Before following any of the steps here, get a blog. Go to Blogger.com where you can practice and get a feel for it.

Later you will buy webhosting and create a WordPress blog of your own and learn to manage it.

Create an account and WRITE DOWN your username and password

You may now create any number of blogs. They will keep you busy so make one with a silly name and fiddle with it

Make another with a serious name of your choosing (which will appear on the web as "yourname.blogspot.com"

Experiment with features and settings on the silly one and break it if necessary. Then make another to play with, if you succeed in breakage

With the serious blog, write seriously and look after it. You will want to publish each article as soon as. The word is to publish only when an item (page, section or entire site) is ‘production ready’, as in good enough to be proud of. In practice, since you’re excited to see your stuff up there, publish as you like.

In offering the above advice I tie it to the previous: When reading your writings online, read critically. Then edit the blog item and re publish. Unless you are first-time-perfect (and some people are) consider your work NEVER finished.

Paid web hosting -

Parameters

Other considerations