The Creation of a Website: Getting Started
I must admit, it has been far too long since I have written for pleasure; it seems that for the most part I’m stuck writing a report at work or writing something trivial for a class assignment—not that my education is trivial, but it seems to be more and more difficult to concentrate on it as I get bogged down with everything else.
But, alas, I will put that all behind me.
I will be embarking on a multipart series about the creation of a website; in particular the creation of the very product you see before your eyes—hopefully one you like.
The real question I have to start out with in this case is: why should I even write an article concerning this subject? Simply put, if you’re interested in developing something for yourself—a blog perhaps—you should probably know the right way to go about it, and besides, I write about what I know.
Anyway, unless you’re using a template, there really is a process that must be followed in order to ensure your website meets certain established guidelines and expectations. For instance, in the previous version of Minor Speculum you would have noticed while browsing in Firefox that it refused to display properly; that can be quite a problem, which we will be discussing in greater detail later.
All right, lets get on with it.
Formalities
What I would primarily like to do here is to go through a couple of the steps in the pre-production, or planning, stages of web design. By far, this is the single most important step in the process. DO NOT SKIMP on any of it!
Ok, perhaps claiming it as the most important is a small stretch, because you’ll want to make sure you have some killer content, but trust me going in with a plan makes things a hell of a lot easier in the end.
Demographics
Jumping into a project like this, with a relatively ‘well’ established fan base, it’s pretty simple to tell what your particular demographic is looking for, but in most cases you’ll probably only know who your target audience is. And to be honest, figuring out what kind of content to serve up on a platter to that audience can be the most difficult part.
If you have a truckload of money lying around, I would suggest doing a lot of research. Form focus groups, collect data, hire scientists to study the data, and form more focus groups. After that compile the data, and serve up the content.
If you’re like the majority of us self-published kings of our own universe, you’ll lack the government grants and private funding to conduct such studies. Instead, there is a good chance that the kind of research you’ll have to do is on the web. You have to ask yourself, “What are sites similar in content and style to the approach I would like to take doing and should I do the same?”
If you were not one to go too far outside the clichéd box, then I would stick to a tried and true formula; what works for them will probably work for me. Pretty simple.
Bottom line on this one: do the research, and make sure you can serve up killer content, because without it, the best design in the world won’t keep visitors coming back.
Lets Keep Planning
“Jesus Christ man. I thought we were done with this planning.” Wrong again, sucka. Now that we know who we want to ship content to, we need to know how they expect that content to be displayed, and—better yet—how do we want it to be displayed?
When it comes down to it, you can do this any number of ways. I’m a little old school, so I start out with a pencil, a number two will work, and a sketchpad. I quickly, and let me emphasize quickly, rough out about five to ten different layout ideas. I’m not a traditionally trained graphic designer, so my ideas are not always conventional, and they will not always translate to the web, but the idea here is to get as creative as possible.
Keep in mind that the one thing you need to know about layout design for the web is that for the most part you’ll want to stick to a grid—don’t get me wrong, you can design something that doesn’t appear to be on a grid, but at the end of the day, you’re outside of the box design will still be done…on a grid.
Anyway, once I have those roughs complete, I grab a couple that have caught my attention and see if I can adapt them for some further refining. Once I settle on a layout that I’m happy enough to work with, I’ll take that layout into Adobe Illustrator and set it up so that I can start to work with sizing and can refine the layout so that it will actually work on the web.
Now that we’re into Illustrator, we’ll have to leave the layout and design for the next installment.
What have we covered?
So, what exactly did we just cover here?
- Your Demographic – Who are you serving content to?
- Content – What kind of content will you deliver?
- Plan the Design – How should I set up the layout?
Hopefully with a little planning and research you’ll be able to answer these questions for the beginning stages of your own project—if you’re even thinking about it.
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