Planning your site

Information

Before you start creating pages and filling them in, you should ask yourself a few questions:

  • What information are we trying to communicate?
  • What is the profile of the audience and what do they want?
  • Is a private part (intranet) necessary?

The idea behind these questions is to create a small document summarizing the purpose of the site and its content.

In addition to the questions revolving around the content of the site (and its purpose), the questions of administrative rights will be added:

  • Who is responsible for the site (the main administrator)?
  • Who can edit the site?
  • How often will the site be updated?

Prepare a site map

Once the purpose of the site has been identified and its content clarified, it is useful to create a site map.
It is simply a matter of referencing the titles of the pages and their tree structure. If the titles of the pages are clear enough, a simple glance at the site map will allow you to understand the structure of the site.

The sitemap also gives you a more global vision of the future result, and allows you to identify possible gaps or duplications.
Also try to visualize the navigation of the site as it will be presented to the users.

Getting the content ready

The last step before starting to edit the site is to collect its content.

Here are some tips to help you publish on the web:

  • Be concise, users ‘scan’ web pages and won’t read long blocks of text!
  • Air out your texts, even short ones.
  • Point out the important points. Use lists, bold or headlines to indicate the importance of the content.

Languages and translation

It is possible to make your website in one language and then translate it later.
However, it is important to think very early on about the need for possible multilingual versions of the site.