Site Design: Thinking About Content

STEP ONE: ROUGH OUTLINE OF CONTENT AREAS

Before you begin the actual process of designing and creating your site, you need to have a good sense of what content areas you'll have. This decision, after all, will impact your navigation which will, in turn, impact the kinds of layouts possible for both the main and inner pages.

In some ways, this step is akin to making a rough outline for a paper. Nothing formal is needed here, really, just some quickly jotted notes about what pages you think you'll want in the site. This list will probably face some revision, but a basic idea is all that's needed at this point.

For example, when creating this site, I started out thinking I would need pages for the syllabus, schedule, assignments, portfolios, and links. You can see that since then it's been expanded (and in other ways condensed) but that initial sketch gave me a guide to start thinking about design.

Do that right now for your final project—make a quick list, no matter how rough, of what pages you'll need. Once you have that list, you can start thinking about your design needs.