AKA: Holy crap I wish I had a team!
After starting to develop my website, I realized all the elements that need to fall into place to make something I would be proud to present. It’s not just buying a domain name and some webspace. It’s not just writing up some blog posts. It’s not just making some drawings to explain technical terms. It’s A LOT OF WORK! And having a full-time job and two young children is making me feel like this may be insurmountable. But here I am. Writing a blog about how this may be too much work >_>.
Let me give you a high-level explanation of all the things you will need to do if you are making a website on our own.
You can think of a website consisting of the following four areas
- Technology Infrastructure
- Design
- Content
- Marketing
1. Technology Infrastructure
Technology infrastructure includes:
- server space
- Domain names
- SSL certificates
- Content Management System (ex: WordPress)
- analytics.
If you are hosting a podcast you would also need to buy podcast hosting space. There are probably other things I am not remembering right now but this list includes any backend technology needed to make the site work.
2. Design
Design is the look of your website. This includes:
- Logo
- color scheme
- typography
- graphics
- layout
You can create your own logo and imagery. You can pay someone to make your logo or purchase stock photos and icons etc. You can use free fonts or pay for fonts. You can use a free template for your layout, buy a premade template or make your own. It all depends on your time and your budget.
3. Content
This is the copy you will be posting on your site such as:
- Calls to action
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Body copy
Content can also be
- Graphics/Photos like a photo gallery or an art portfolio
- Videos
- Audio like a podcast
- Downloadable docs like PDFs/Word/PPT files.
4. Marketing
How will you advertise your website?
- Word of mouth?
- Social media?
- Newsletter?
- Promotional swag like stickers or t-shirts
So many options.
Bringing it all together
The above descriptions are a very high-level breakdown of all the work that goes into making a website. Any task you completed can be grouped into those four categories, and some can overlap. For example, setting up a newsletter is Marketing, but it’s also Technical Infrastructure because you need to figure out how to collect email addresses and send out a newsletter in mass. You may choose to use a company like MailChimp to manage the mailing system for your site.
Another thing to remember is the four items don’t need to be completed in a linear fashion. You can start working on Content and Design before you even pay for webspace and a domain name. You can work on setting up your website backend while developing content to post when it goes live, or as I have decided to do, blog about the website development process as I experience it.
Now that we have a basic understanding of all the elements needed for a website redesign its time to create the Project Brief. I will be covering Project Briefs in my next post.