Designing and creating a website
2. Planning a website

In this activity you will plan the content and structure of your website. It is quite likely that you are very keen to start creating the website, but planning the content and layout is the most important part of website design. If you change your plans at a later stage it will result in a lot of work to repair all the various files in your site.

Follow these steps to complete these activities. Look for contexts that are meaningful to you in your classroom.

Work on your own (30 minutes).

• Think carefully about the purpose of your site. This will determine:
  • what content you place on the site;
  • how much content you place on the site;
  • how to link between the content.
• Once your purpose is clear you need to plan the various sections of content. You could use a table in a word processor or anything similar. You should have no more than about 6 main sections of content. Look at other websites to see how the links from the home page (the first page) are like labels for large sections of content.

Read more about user contact time and narrative

List of offline websites.

Work on your own (30 minutes).

• Information on websites tends to be divided into much smaller chunks than the chapters of a book. You should try not to place more than one A4 typed page (two or three screens of information on any one web page because users do not like to scroll down the page too much.
• Plan your site content, bearing the importance of "packaging" in mind. Remember that each package of information must link to related information in a way that you intend the user to browse through your site. This all needs to be planned. Do not be too hasty to start using Front Page.

Use this content planning template.

Read more about packaging information.

Meet in pairs (15 minutes).

• Share your content outline with your partner and give each other feedback.

Work on your own (30 minutes).

• Consider how the "packages" of information will link together. A chaotic linking from one page to the other will confuse the user. Just as the content planning template was arranged in an orderly table, you should plan a clear and simple way to link documents to each other.

Read about site structure.

How pages link to one another.

Work on your own (15 minutes).

• Create a one page web.

How to create a one page web