every 5 weeks

So you’ve done your brainstorming, and have come up with a killer idea for a website. How will you turn that idea into a website?

Below I list my steps, look for more details in later posts:

1. List the features — I know you know what you want the website to do, but write it down.
2. Pick a name — Your idea needs a cool name to be marketable.
3. Pick a domain — Now if only that cool name you decided on was available. I prefer to stick to .com domains, but don’t let that limit you.
4. Design the database — I knew that database class at college would come in handy, try and build a normalized database model to hold all the information your website will need.
5. Design the brand — You need to decide on the character of your website, which will impact your Information Architecture and overall design.
6. Layout the site (Information Architecture) — Put all those lovely features on the page, left a little, right a little, perfect.
7. Build the website — Start coding!
8. Complete the design — If you’ve done things right, you’ll be able to use CSS to apply a nice lick of paint to your built out website.
9. Test — Make sure it works, now make sure again!
10. Launch — Let the world know you’re open for business.

Now isn’t that easy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Methodology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.