Planning a website
A Web site is a collection of connected pages, stored on a Web server. If you are creating a new Web site, you must ask yourself these basic questions:
- Why are you developing a Web site?
- Who is your audience?
- What content is most important to them?
- What will they want to see?
- What is the purpose of your page?
- What message do you wish to convey?
- What is going to make this site successful?
- Who will be responsible for writing content and providing images?
- Who will be responsible for maintaining the site, once it has been created?
Find out what your customers want or need
Ask your customers what they need or want to see. Many times our perceptions of what they want and need are different.
Develop an information site plan
Create a flowchart showing your main page on top and your level two pages following. Your main page is general and your level two pages are more specific.
Determine your technical needs
What do you need to be able to create and maintain the site?
- Dreamweaver - the supported and recommended Web site software. If you don't have it, you may purchase it on campus at an educational discount from TotalTECH, WMU's campus computer store.
- Photoshop Elements - if you need to work with images. This is essentially a lite edition of Photoshop which should suffice for most needs. It may also be obtained on campus at an educational discount from TotalTECH.