How I design a website…
This page will change over time. Now that I am doing more web work I’m trying to find a workflow/check list that works for me. As most of my close friends know I really like using WordPress for my CMS. For most small-midsize businesses I find WordPress can do everything pretty well.
First off talk with the client and find out their needs.
- Time frame for completing the website
- What is needed with the design. ie. Do they already have their own logo, company colors etc…
- Draw out the major sections of the website. This usually means doing the layout of the front page and sub pages. If they are going to be running a blog I will have to create a 3rd template for the blog postings.
- Once drawn out do a mock-up of the pages in photoshop in a psd file. Try and keep all pages in one file with each page in separate groupings. This helps keep all the information in one file and makes cutting up the photoshop file much easier later on.
- Install WordPress using their famous 5 minute install.
- Create 3 files. Index.html, page.html, and post.html in the root of the directory where you installed wordpress. Doing this will allow you to template the major components.
- Check that your mark up is valid. I recommend doing this every 30 lines of code to make sure that you catch any mistakes you made. While the W3C doesn’t officially support doing “LOCAL” checks you can do it using Web Developer Tools inside of FireFox. You can download web developer tools here. This will not only check your HTML/XHTML and CSS.
- I am assuming you know a bit about WordPress. If not, I would recommend that you go and buy the book “Digging into WordPress”. Once you have the three main templates created you only have copy and past the main areas into the template folder.
- You’re now done and made a lot of $$$
Good luck!
