Chapter 3. Planning Out Your Website

IN THIS CHAPTER:

14 About Planning Your Site

15 About Focusing on What You Want to Present

16 Match Your Design and Content to Your Audience

17 Organize Your Site's Content

18 Build a Site Map

19 About Designing Your Site's Navigation

There's a sign that used to be hung at some commercial websites : "It's the content, stupid!" It was a shorthand way of reminding people that, at heart, the Web is a way to give people information or entertain themin other words, give them content. All the graphics, videos , animations, and cool web techniques in the world aren't useful if there isn't solid content on the site, organized well.

That holds true whether you're building web pages for fun, friends and family, or for profit. So in this chapter you'll learn how to decide what content you want to present, and after you've decided that, you'll learn how to make a site map and build navigation so that your content will be presented as clearly as possible. And building a site map ahead of time is also the best way for you to organize your work, as well.