In order to create a web site you must follow six major steps. Which are site definition and planning, information architecture, site design, site construction, site marketing, tracking, evaluation, and maintenance. Possibly the most important thing about starting a site would be to make sure you have the right people to create the site, the budget to back the site, and that you will be able to maintain it.
The initial stage is to set your goals and start your planning. Figure out the budget, the site’s content, it’s functionality, and technology support required. You also need to make sure that you hav everything you will need for production, all the technology needed, web server support, and enough for the budget to create and maintain the site. Every site needs a project manager and a process manager.
The project manager creates the site and once it is running they hand it over to the process manger who may or may not be the official editor of the site. The site editor also makes sure that all materials that are copyrighted on the site are not misused.
At this stage, site design, a content architecture should be drawn out and prototypes created. You need to keep your site organized and well designed in order to atract more viewers. You can create templates, it is much easier to add pages to a web site when when you can work of a page that contains all the basic navigations. You also need to make sure your site is accessable to all users.
When you get to the more mature stage of site construction is when the bulk of the site’s pages are constructed. You want to wait until now to start your site because you want to make sure you have all the components needed, a tested wireframes and prototypes, and a polished page to put on your site.
“Once it has all be constructed… it is ready for user testing.” Which should be done by people who were not involved in creating your site or in your site development team. Someone that will give informed criticism and tell you of any bugs, typograhic errors, and or design malfunctions.
All of my information has come from http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/7-development-process.html
