Did you carefully pre-plan your website? Or did you pretty much just get an idea and start designing your website? Since I am not a web designer, I had to have someone design my site for me. I did write up a basic idea of what colors I wanted to use and what pages I needed for my website. My site is a work in progress right now so I am doing some more planning. But I at least wanted to have a site up and running.

Hi. I started thinking about a web site and tried different things for quite a long time. I used the MS Publisher program and I enjoyed it for a long time. It was also a work in progress. I was never satisfied with it and continually made changes until I got it just right.

 

I finally did take that site down because it wouldn't support paid advertising. I liked it though....probably because it was my first effort.

 

Did you carefully pre-plan your website? Or did you pretty much just get an idea and start designing your website? Since I am not a web designer, I had to have someone design my site for me. I did write up a basic idea of what colors I wanted to use and what pages I needed for my website. My site is a work in progress right now so I am doing some more planning. But I at least wanted to have a site up and running.

I usually go two different routes.

 

First, and most commonly, I'll open up my graphics program of choice (Fireworks, Photoshop, or sometimes my ancient ol' Picture Publisher by Micrographx) and stare at a blank canvas for a while before beginning to draw. I play around with color, shape, text, and gradually the hazy inspiration begins to form into something solid.

 

My other method is to go to the drawing board, literally: take out my pen and paper and begin to sketch.

 

Both these methods are accompanied by comments in a notebook, where I map down the navigation hierarchy to remind myself of pages I'll need to include. Also, URLs of related sites for either linking or inspirational purposes.

 

(Of course, some of this depends on whether I'm developing the site on my own, or whether I'm working with a client. My notes and sketches tend to be much more detailed when a client's involved -- always good to have something in writing to refer to when discussing stuff with others.)

I normally plan my site like keyword research, site layout, content writing etc and let my designer choose the colors and theme for my site, becuase i'm not a designer so maybe he knows better which color and theme best suits the requirment.

I normally plan my site like keyword research, site layout, content writing etc and let my designer choose the colors and theme for my site, becuase i'm not a designer so maybe he knows better which color and theme best suits the requirment.

 

Eria, your method sounds a lot like mine as well. Although I do usually come up with the basic idea for the colors that I want to be used on my website. However, I always keep in mind or take into consideration what my designers says since he is the expert when it comes to design and I am not.

I plan my website layouts on paper first. I might not go directly by my sketches, but if I don't I tend to have "easy" sites instead of what I actually want. Having the idea on paper makes me stretch a bit more.

Hi all,

 

I like to plan my sites based around the best keywords I have for the theme of my site. I put each keyword with all its info on an index card and then decide how to tier it. Tier 1 would be my homepage, then I choose about 10 to 15 semi broad keywords for my tier 2 then I work out my tier 3 pages from there.

Well, that seems to be quite the good method to use. I bet that in the long run, it saves a lot of time

Looks like a considerably better idea to plan for content writing specific to web pages.

to me, yes i design carefully. i am currently working on a blogger's network website, it's a small community anyway..

Did you carefully pre-plan your website? Or did you pretty much just get an idea and start designing your website? Since I am not a web designer, I had to have someone design my site for me. I did write up a basic idea of what colors I wanted to use and what pages I needed for my website. My site is a work in progress right now so I am doing some more planning. But I at least wanted to have a site up and running.

 

If you are having someone else design it for you, then is up to you to come up with the detailed requirements for them. Whatever is open for creativity then should also be specified as being left for the designer to come up with. IMO

I'm planning a new website, and I'm planning on starting with the concept and working it out on paper with keywords and SEO in mind.

I planned my whole website and did it myself. I didn't really lay out a plan, just kind of the pages I wanted, then looked around for backgrounds and colors to see what I liked to go with the pages I wanted.

I designed my own and I just designed on paper where I wanted the general things and how I wanted them to liik like. I translated that into code and made a black and white page with everything in its place. At that point I designed all my bottons, played with the background, etc. After that just put it all together and fine tune.

Did you carefully pre-plan your website? Or did you pretty much just get an idea and start designing your website? Since I am not a web designer, I had to have someone design my site for me. I did write up a basic idea of what colors I wanted to use and what pages I needed for my website. My site is a work in progress right now so I am doing some more planning. But I at least wanted to have a site up and running.

 

My website planning begins in my head. I jot down ideas on paper and then flesh them out. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler, so I dont do any art work on paper, but I can still visualize what I want. Then, as I start the actual design method, I use WYSIWYG and look at what I'm doing often. Most times, after a few days of intense work, I'll step back and take a break. I find I do better work when I allow my brain a break from it all. So yes, I guess I do carefully pre-plan my site. However, I find it's a continual work in progress and the idea I started out with may not resemble the finished product at all.

My first two sites ended up being failures. I didn't plan them really at all but my 3rd site rocked. It made 100+ users in 3 days! But for some reason I cannot remember, I shut it down.

My first site I did from the sit of my pants, and well, it sucked. THe new revised version I planned as I stated above and came along pretty good. I designed all the buttons, etc. in Paint Shop Pro, and then it was fairly easy to put together.

I'm getting some really great ideas here, even though it wasn't originally my question. I was thinking about just jumping in, but for some reason, I was worried about doing things that way. I am usually into helping others out with their with content, and that is the area of SEO I am skilled in, but I've been using this site to learn the other aspects of creating a site and getting a lot of great ideas. Thanks.

Whenever I plan a website, I find that I always have to sketch it out on paper. It never looks the way I want it otherwise and it takes me that much longer to design it. Sometimes I have a mind block and can’t get any ideas so I’ll sketch different layouts, think of colors in terms of dark or light, figure out how much content I plan on having, and decide on how many links. It may take me a while sometimes, but I’ll come up with something I like and that works really well.

Sketch on paper is always the best way to getting start it. But my suggestion to you is to find some sample template online, and pick the one which fits the best what you are looking for and show it to your web designer, therefore, he/she could easily meet what you are really looking for on a website you want to make

I was a very bad planner up until about 3-4 months ago; I would "just start" based on a concept in my head, and was always wasting time going back and adding things.

 

Recently I did a site and actually sketched it on paper first, planned my divs, etc. I was amazed at how quickly I was able to put the actual code together once I had done that! I actually think it is one of my better projects.