Your Online Resource Centre
How to Organize Your Website
By: Stephen Condren
The most important thing in designing a Website is to start out with a simple pen and paper and do free-hand sketches of flow charts that show your hierarchy of files and folders. Do this before anything, that is: drawing, lettering, designing, keyboarding, graphic layout, and writing.
Anything that you do before you put together your layout will end up being redone or completely discarded. This is because as you design your hierarchy you will find out that your needs change and need to be modified. This is true for both content and graphic design. You have to know what your Website is about and what it is that you can offer your viewer. Most people that come to your site are in need of information so be sure to provide lots of it. People want to know what you have to offer.
With this understood now you need to put this into your Website scheme. Jot all of the ideas and things that you have to offer on the side of your paper, do this in a column so it is easy to check off or cross out when completed. Making list throughout all of the design phase is crucial. Trying to put together a Website ?as you go? or out of memory is not good business. You will end up with a complicated road map that ends up leading no where.
After you make your list decide how you want people to go through your site. You may want people to go into an area and have all the links in that area cross referenced only to that area. For example, in your Articles page you may want to put a ?Articles Home? button put on each article so that when they finish the article they can pick the ?Article Home? button and be taken back to see other articles you have written. If you put in a ?Home? button it will jet them out of your article region to the home page, far way from where they navigated to. Keep in mind where you want people to go and how you want them to tour.
Lastly, when you are working with templates be sure to mark in your flow chart a box outside of your hierarchy but referenced to it so that you can use the empty forms to assist you in keeping your site looking uniform.
About the Author: I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago in Hyde Park Township, near the University of Chicago. As I child I was always drawing and painting. My father owned an art supply company, Favor Ruhl & Watson, where I was able to get all that I needed to progress in my work. I have always enjoyed portraiture and landscape painting. In High School (Naperville Central High School) I took Drafting from Mr. Pierce. I quickly grasped the principles of perspective and drafting and hence made a career with both Fine Art and Architectural Renderings. In the mid 1970's I joined the US Navy and was stationed on board the USS Midway, CV-41. The Midway was home ported in Yokosuka, Japan (A suburb of Tokyo). While in service I traveled all over Asia including such countries as Korea, China, Philippines, Singapore, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and Japan. While in Japan I learned Japanese. I speak German and Spanish as well. I am an omnivorous reader with a love of History and Philosophy. I admire the works of Immanuel Kant, Albert Schweitzer, and Fredrich Nietzsche. |  |
