The secrets of planning a successful website

Peter also notes that how data is managed changes the way a site has to be built, and such things need to be decided prior to touching a line of code, in order to minimise costs. "You need to figure out whether the site will use data from sources other than its own database, and how these sources will be integrated into the site technically and visually," he says.

"Furthermore, you must determine whether the site will be content-managed, and if so by whom, because this defines whether a publishing workflow is needed, thereby potentially altering the required hosting environment."

And even if the site is static, you still need to plan how updates are possibly going to be made in the future. Are you or the client going to deal with this? Are you and your client both on the same page about this, and if the client is to do the work, do they actually have the technical knowledge that's required? Will you support them if they don't?

Another technical consideration to plan for is that if the site is an overhaul rather than an entirely new entity, you need to decide how you're going to transition everything over. Will there be a defined, pre-warned period of downtime, to give you a chance to move everything across, test everything and then make the site live again? And how will existing pages that users will have bookmarked (and, for that matter, search engines will have indexed) redirect to equivalent replacement ones?

Of course, even when all these considerations – from the initial understanding of the site's aim through to where and how it will be hosted – are determined, your journey's only just begun, because then it's time to implement the plan and build the site. As Walker reminds us, "An important thing to consider is that a plan is a living document."

So don't think you can tick a checkbox that says 'complete plan' at any time. After all, a plan needs room to evolve and adapt in the same way as the very best robust yet flexible website – one built from a good plan, naturally.

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First published in .net magazine, Issue 183

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