Hello,

I'm raring to go and dive straight into a website idea I've come up with, but I know from past experience how useful some planning can be.
Unfortunately I don't have much past experience in planning websites, where should I start? I've been brainstorming ideas about how to achieve various things and asking on forums the best way to go about implementing features already, and drawing how I'd like the site to look on paper, but I don't have a roadmap yet, or anything to use as a guide to ensure the project doesn't veer off course basically.

Could anyone point me in the right direction towards perhaps a tool I could use, or guide I could read, to help me plan the site? Apologies if this ground has been covered several times before here, I've been searching around the net but any search to do with the words I'm using seem to have been SEO'd to death by companies whom have nothing to do with this subject!

I'm not sure there's a single way to plan a site. I like to start with the content. Ideally I'd have it all written, but at the least I want to know what pages will be on the site.

Then I organize that content, work on the information architecture and create a navigation scheme. Once I have the information organized I think of what needs to be included on various pages of the site. Maybe the home page and a top level section page and an interior page. Maybe more or less depending on how many levels deep the content will go.

Next for me is the design and finally the development.

One thing to consider with a site is it's never really done. You can get lost in planning if you try to make it perfect from the start. All good websites evolve over time so while I understand not wanting to veer off course at some point you have to move past the planning and work on the site.

You can always change things once the site is built and live.

This is all good advice, especially about "paralysis by analysis." Sounds like you have the opposite tendency, but a lot of people cheat themselves this way.

The most important thing is to use CSS whenever humanly possible. CSS stands for "it's okay to change your mind." In Greek. Get FireFox and FireBug. They'll be your best friend.

I like to start with a drawing of roughly what I want the page to look like. I guess actually I start by letting most of the questions VanGogh brought up percolate for a while until I have a grasp on them - do I want the navigation along the top, or down one side ( how many links? ). Colors go next, which is a tad easier once the page is divided up.

But I don't know how valid my advice is, other than that you should use CSS because it will save you a lot of time later.

Hi, thanks for the advice.

Based on this, I've decided the best route will be to begin entering my content into a program that can save it in CSV format; presumably any database software will be able to import this with ease.

I've also got to decide whether to use ASP or AJAX; I'm going to be doing most of the build in Visual Web Developer (which I've never used!), Quanta Plus for coding (*nix only unfortunately; the Windows version (Quanta Plus Gold is like comparing Firefox to Mozilla unfortunately; it's dreadful), and Dreamweaver for anything I don't want to code, if Visual Web Developer can't handle something.

I need something to optimize images with too, I might buy Fireworks but it seems a bit of an investment for such a simple seeming operation, any cheaper/free solution you could suggest (other than piracy (I used to sell DVDs and Video Games (www.DVDExtras.co.uk), I don't like Piracy much!).

That's all I can think of for tonight, as usual I find myself up at 5AM!

Visual Web Dev is actually pretty good software for writing ASP code, and html in general ( there are better here, but it's not bad ).

It's not a question of ASP or AJAX; it's ASP or ASP and AJAX. Html still rules the roost, and for a while we've been using javascript to manipulate the html client-side. Now it's java callouts to web services to manipulate the html. And ASP ( or ASP.NET ) is an environment that does server-side processing, but emits html.

If there's got to be a learning curve either way, you're probably better off going the .net route. And I personally like the code-behind model, putting the markup in one file and the logic in another. You should give that a try.

Do you have a copy of Photoshop SE or Elements? Most digital cameras come with one, you might want to look through your boxes. You can use that to set jpeg quality, although dialup is getting less and less common.

I think the decisions you're making about saving the content in CSV format and which languages to use really have nothing to do with the planning of the site itself.

You're thinking less about the site and more about how you're going to construct it. It's as though you've decided you're going to use concrete and steel to build a house without having drawn the plans for the house. Maybe the house will be a log cabin with a dirt floor once the plans are drawn and you don't need to use either concrete or steel.

The reason I say to start with the content is so you have a better idea what the site is about and what's needed. If you're planning 10 static pages for the site then using a database for the content is overkill.

What are you planning on programming? You don't add asp or Ajax to a site just because you can, but because there's some reason to. They're also not mutually exclusive. You could use both on a site or neither or combine them with other programming languages.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for here, but it's coming across like you're trying to plan the details without thinking at all about the big picture.

What exactly is the site about? Where are you in the creation of the site? Do you have a design and content and are just trying to understand how best to build the site? Or do you only have an idea?

Planning is important, but I think you're trying to plan the wrong things in the hopes that by doing so it will make obvious the things you really should be thinking about and planning.

You might be interested in these articles:
http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/design_process/

http://www.alistapart.com/topics/pro...ementworkflow/

All the advice that's been given so far is right on the money, but it looks like I need to touch on something that was missed.

Don't use CSV! It's kind of like the dodo bird.

Instead use XML. It's more like the humans, assuming we don't kill ourselves off any time soon. Seriously, there are two ways to store data nowadays, in the modern era: SQL Server, and XML. If you want to use ASP.NET, there you go. If you want to use ajax, well, guess what the x stands for?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

The most important thing is to use CSS whenever humanly possible. CSS stands for "it's okay to change your mind." In Greek.

That's funny...

Originally Posted by Thenotsowyzewun

... I've decided the best route will be to begin entering my content into a program that can save it in CSV format; presumably any database software will be able to import this with ease.

I wouldn't go that far, and I wouldn't recommend putting your content into xml either. That's way overkill and too detailed/low-level for where you're at right now. Keep it high level and fine tune the details later.

Just open up Word or whatever word processor you use, and start typing out a few pages of content. You can spell check it along the way, and you can copy and paste that content later into whatever framework you put up.

On most of my sites, I started with an open source template such as Drupal, which has all of the page layout and CSS pre-built. Then it's just a matter of pasting my content into a few pages to get the site started, and deciding what I want to display in the sidebars and main body sections.

In fact, I don't recommend that you get more than a few pages of content written out before you get them displayed in your site framework. Start simple. Just get a few pages up, and it'll give you a better idea of where you want the site to go.

You can move those content pages around easily later.

Don't worry about anyone seeing it at that stage either... it'll take a while before Google or anyone else notices it