Decisions about your web site

There are certain things you must decide before even beginning to create your web site.

Why are you creating a web site?

You must have some purpose behind your site. Are you building it to change people's attitude about something? Are you building it to inform people of something? Are you building it to entertain people? Are you building it to say, "this is me?" Are you building it to help educate people? Are you building it just to see what it's like to build a site? Whatever your reasons, you need to figure out what they are. This will drastically affect the design of your site.

What is the concept behind this web site?

After you decide why you are building the site, you need to determine the concept or theme of this site. When I created Adventure Living, my purpose was to create a site that would encourage people to get out and enjoy life. Although that explains my purpose, it does not really explain the theme. My next step was to decide that I would accomplish that goal by centering my site around adventures.

What will your web site contain?

This question was probably partially answered by the previous question. However, now you need to define the answer more fully. What do you really want to include? For example, if you were building this site to educate people, you need to think about what types of information you'll want to convey.

Stop here and think for a while about your site. Answer these questions. Only then will you be ready to continue.

Your next step is to acquire the software you need. If you have an FTP client, a telnet client, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Netscape Navigator, feel free to skip the software section. However, make sure you have all four of those packages first!

Go to the software section.