This Document Shows The Information About the Initial Steps that are to be Considered While Designing a Website

1. Process of Designing a Website
Website:
A website is a set of related web pages served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at
least one web server.It is accessible through a network such as the Internet or a private local area
network through an Internet address known as a Uniform resource locator. All publicly accessible
websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.
History of Web:
The World Wide Web has its historical roots sprung up all over the world, but it really all started in
March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland wrote a
paper called “Information Management: A Proposal”.The proposal suggested a way of managing
information that uses a "hypertext" process to link related documents together over a network. In this
document, he wrote "just another program" (BBC, 12/31/03) that happened to revolutionize the world
as we know it.
October 1990, Berners-Lee joined by Robert Cailliau and together they created a working prototype
of what he dubbed the "WorldWideWeb" (ultimately the name was changed to add spaces). This
system was viewed and pages edited with the WorldWideWeb browser/editor (later renamed Nexus).
The Web at that time was only text, as the browser didn't have the ability to display inline images.
February 1993, the Web remained in text-only form until 1992 or 1993 (sources differ) when the
NCSA Mosaic browser came online supporting graphics. In February 1993, NCSA released the first
alpha version of Marc Andreesen’s Mosaic browser for X-Windows.NETCOM releases NetCruiser to
set up customers with a graphical access to the Internet, it includes a graphical Web browser similar
to Mosaic.
March of 1994, Marc Andreesen and some colleagues leave NCSA to form "Mosaic Communications
Corp." (It was renamed as Netscape Communications). In July 1994, MIT and CERN announce that
they are forming the W3 Organization to regulate the Web.
1994 to 2003,HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, and finally XML and XHTML 1.0 were all released in
this time period. We also saw the rise and fall of the browser wars with Netscape gaining a huge
market and then ultimately losing to Internet Explorer. The Web continued to grow as more and more
people got on the Internet. In fact, today many people do not realize that the Web and the Internet are
actually two different things.On December 31st, 2003, England announced that Tim Berners-Lee
would be awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his pioneering work
creating the World Wide Web.
Reference Link: http://webdesign.about.com/cs/historyofhtml/a/aawebhistory.htm
Process of Designing a Website:
The process of designing a website is a process in whichdesigning a website is divided and
categorizedinto simple steps. This breaks the high-level difficulties into easier tasks that can be used
as a map for each project. These simple steps are described below
Muhammad Danish Badar
Superior University, Lahore
Contact: +923234539176

2. Gathering information for Website:
The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. A person must
consider the look and feel of site that is to be created.
This first step is actually the most important one because it creates an understanding of the
website for the person or client it is created for. This can be done by making a lot of questions
to help the clients understand your business and your needs in a web site. There are certain
things to consider for this which are explained below
Purpose and Goal: The purpose of the website helps you to set goals for the website. Goals
are useful for measuring how the site is performing, and whether it is worth expanding and
improving the site.
Content: Content includes what kind of information the client or the user will be looking for on
your site.The client or the user must feel at ease while looking for specific information, a
particular product or service, online ordering etc.
Planning:
The best sites start with a plan and a map. The information gathered in abovestep is put
together in form of a map. This map contains all the content that is to be used in designing a
website. A good user an easy to operate website, he also keeps his client and the users in his
mind because they are the people who will be learning about his service or buying his product.
Research and Note-Taking: Whatever gaps are left in the overall picture is needed to be filled
by doing some research. This can be done by visiting competing websites and see what types
of designs are already beenpublishedon the internet. This is the time to make notes for
website.
Sketching:The next thing is to draw a sketch of your website on a piece of paper. This
includes the structure and layout of website.
Choosing a Domain:A domain is also known as URL or address of the website. Choosing a
Muhammad Danish Badar
Superior University, Lahore
Contact: +923234539176

3. right domain name is equally important as designing a website. Some people get caught up in
designing that they forget that the domain name is the first thing the users will see.
Design:
Most designers jump straight to the designing process without getting information or planning
the website which is a useful task. If you have done the previous steps then it will be a lot
easier to design the website.
Once you are ready to start designing, keep in mind that you need to design more than just a
home page.You’ll need a design for the sub-pages of your site as well. It can sometimes be
easy to design a home page concept, slice it up and start coding only to get to sub-pages and
have no direction. Sweat the details and make it pixel perfect on any graphics creation tool.
During the design phase, it is very important to get feedback often to make sure all specified
requirements have been met. If the client wants to make changes, now is the time to do it
before the design is finalized and coded, making it ten times more difficult to make what would
be a simple change if you were to do it during the design phase. A designer must use the
content including the following basics
Text:This can be articles, blog posts, lists, reviews, or anything that you want to write about on
your site.
Graphics: There are lots of places to find images for web pages including photosyou’ve taken
and free images. Be sure to using the right format for your images.
Multimedia:Multimedia can have a negative impact on awebsite. Make sure that the added
sound and video to websites appropriately. Multimedia isn’t appropriate for all clients and
users.
Coding/Developing:
Thisphase is where the website itself is created. At this time, a web designer will take all of
Muhammad Danish Badar
Superior University, Lahore
Contact: +923234539176

4. the graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the actual, functional site.
Elements such as forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts etc. are implemented
and made functional during this phase, as well.
The process can be done through coding. This coding includes the use of HTML, XHTML,
CSS, JavaScript, PHP, etc.
Testing:
Now the completely developed websiteis tested and demonstrated how page templates will
render in major web browsers and mobile devices. It is important to understand that the design
will be appropriate for each device, but may be slightly different due to device specs and
experience.
Testing also includes things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well
as testing for compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), to
make sure that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser
versions.
After the final approval, the site is ready to deliver. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program
is used to upload the web site files to your server. Most web designers offer web hosting
services. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site is uploaded to the server
with a chosen domain name, the site becomes ready to be fully functional.This marks the
official launch of your site.
Maintenance:
The development of your web site is not over yet. Maintenance is the necessary thing to
keep your web site running. One way to do this is to bring visitors to your site which can be
Muhammad Danish Badar
Superior University, Lahore
Contact: +923234539176

5. done by offering new content or products on a regular basis. A client can do so by contacting
his designer or any other designer. Many designers offer maintenance packages at reduced
rates.
Designers also use maintenance types such as CMS (content management system) which
allows client to do the maintenance by themselves through tools. Other types are SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission) which are used to achieve higher
rankings in search engines.
Some other important parts of maintenance are
Link checking: Fixing broken links is annoying, but it needs to be done. The easiest way is
with a link checker.
Content maintenance:Adding updates to your website all the time. Re-reading existing
content periodically, and updating old pieces.
Redesign: Updating the web design.
Reference Links:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/beforeyoustartawebsite/tp/web-design-process.htm
http://www.idesignstudios.com/blog/web-design/phases-web-design-developmentprocess/#.Up9IirTuEnU
http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/a-6-step-general-process-for-producing-a-website
Muhammad Danish Badar
Superior University, Lahore
Contact: +923234539176