DEVELOPMENT

Development is the objective.

Anything worth developing must ultimately serve a purpose. It is this function which magically provides the energy that ultimately fuels its own existence. Every website ever created now and forever will only exist as long as it serves a purpose. Establish this and its development will take care of itself.

The purpose of Domain Development is to create a Network of Web Specialists proficient in supporting the development of our members successful internet ventures. If you are interested in getting involved, contact us and we will notify you once registration is available.

Mission

Define the mission accurately, and it will fuel the development of your website. As we stated, the fundamental reason for the creation of every website is its purpose. The size and importance of the purpose will determine the complexity of the website. Regardless of the site's complexity, its purpose needs to be simple and clear to its developer. Focus on the people using the site and their needs when defining your mission. Many developers make the mistake of confusing their own needs with their users needs. Seek out the opinions of others to accurately define your potential user's perspective.

The purpose, along with the cost of development, execution and maintenance will also help define the model of the website. You will need to consider whether the site will be commercial or not and if so which business model you should pursue. The four basic commercial models are advertising, subscription, retail sales and service. It is not our concern which model you choose as our focus here is the overall web development process.

Ultimately, the mission should be clearly defined by the completion of your research and prior to the design stage.

Research

Generally, at this time, the purpose or function of the website is nothing more than a simple idea. Developing that idea into a successful website is accomplished by working through a systematic process of research, planning, development and execution. The process of research and planning can take an enormous amount of time if you have no experience in the relevant industry. Proceeding with the development process without a thorough understanding of the market is frequently a fatal mistake.

Market Analysis

Extensive research of the product, the customer and the competition is critical. Even with hard work and dedication, it can take years to understand all the dynamics necessary to compete within the most simple of markets. Essentially you must acquire the knowledge necessary to effectively service your target market and do it better than anyone else. In some cases, you may need to hire or recruit the expertise you lack.

The objective here is to identify the opportunity in the market, establish the weakness of the current competition and develop your competitive advantage. Each of these factors will go a long way in defining your mission.

Concept

Planning for the development of a project requires that a basic concept be created. Conceiving the structure and function of a new website is easily one of the most exciting steps in the whole process.

A good concept requires some level of creativity. There are countless websites built on the same foundation with templates bought or borrowed from someone else. This mindless construction of a website is offensive to every respectable Webmaster. It is an insult to your users and they will quickly feel cheated and eventually they will desert you. The only way to create an efficient, unique and functional website is from scratch. Keep this in mind when drawing up your concept. You will, however, have to work within your limitations. If your knowledge of web design is limited, learn the basics and conceptualize a simple design.

The dynamic and innovative nature of the web makes all websites a continuously evolving entity. Although your website may start simple, it is certain to develop into a much more complex system over time. The more you know about web design, the more options you will have. Your concept should explore several possibilities while each serves the same mission. Evaluate each concept with a critical focus on ease of use. Often functionality can suffer for the sake of style. This mistake will alienate a large portion of the market you seek to serve.

Timeline

This is a planning tool necessary for identifying, estimating and scheduling the duration and completion of each stage of the process. Each task, whether it is time consuming or difficult, needs to be considered. Make a complete list of every significant task you can anticipate. Sort the list into a sequential order based on dependency. Some tasks are not dependent on others and may be scheduled by convenience. Group these by similarity and provide a generous start/finish date. When estimating duration of each task remember to adjust for the reality factor. The human mind is unable to anticipate every factor of completing every step of every phase of a project. For this reason, you should multiply your original estimate by a factor of 1.5 to ensure accuracy. The importance of your schedule is only as critical as the importance of your launch date.

In addition to the timeline, a check list is also helpful. Include all the tasks which are not time consuming but no less important. List them in order of dependency and importance. Add a completion date for each item on the list.

Whether your projects completion date is limited or not, produce the timeline and check list to help establish a plan. This will help you stay on task, keep you from wasting time and prevent steps from being overlooked.

Budget

With a concept and timeline in order, you can now estimate your budget. Fortunately, with the availability of information on the web, the cost of developing and launching a fully functional website is less than one would expect. Assuming you have access to a computer with basic word processing software, a printer and an internet connection.

Review the timeline and check list to establish where price will be a factor. Systematically explore cost reduction or elimination alternatives for each. Control your costs by comprehensively researching the product or service in question. Do not sacrifice quality for cost where it will affect the functionality or performance of your product, service or website.

Create a simple budget which records the estimated price of each item on the list where costs are anticipated. Provide a column for actual costs to be recorded when they are incurred. You should keep both a digital and a hard copy, with a back-up copy for each saved safely off site. This is standard for each and every record of importance resulting from all your business activities.

Website Development

Congratulations, your will is strong. We have covered a lot of material and the finish line is near, but we are now entering the most important phase of the journey. Development of your first website is one of the most gratifying experiences a Webmaster ever has. In spite of all the work, mistakes and frustration, it truly is dramatic when you finally go live and see your creation published to the whole world. Take your time, do a great job and enjoy the ride because you only get one first website.

Content

A website is nothing without content...literally. This is the time to create, gather and organize it. On an importance scale, the content of a website is absolutely at the very top. It is what brings visitors to the site, it is what keeps them on the site and most importantly, it is what brings them back repeatedly. So sit down and get to work.

Start with a list of web pages that will make up the site. Name each and add headings/sub-headings for each section or topic. Sort the list into the most logical order. Your navigation menu will consist of the names of each web page you have listed. Now begin creating the content, start with the index (home) page and don't stop until every page is complete.

Content consists of, among other things, text, images, animation, audio and video. Basically, it is information and you are going to need lots of it. More important than the volume though, is the quality. Publish only original content that is edited properly and presented well and your visitors will thank you by returning for more.

You can use any word processing software for producing the text. Some prefer to use a simple text editor to avoid the extra step of additional editing later. This will be required when you get to the design stage as the code for your page must be written in a program like notepad which requires hard returns and stripes out the formatting. It's not a significant issue either way, but rather a personal preference. Use whatever procedure is most sensible to you. Your images will need to be manipulated with an image editing software program and saved in one of the appropriate file formats like JPEG or PNG. Video on the other hand can be quite complex. What you need to know now is that the video will likely require compression done with video formatting software and may need to be converted into some other file format like MPEG or AVI. Publishing video on the web is becoming much easier now that HTML5 is addressing the issue.

There is an entire industry built on selling content created by writers, producers, musicians and photographers to name a few. Don't waste your time on the free stuff, it's garbage and save your money with regards to the paid content, unless you can afford exclusive rights, of course. People are not going to waste their time with second hand information when they can get the original elsewhere.

Remember to keep a list of references for information created by other sources. Where possible, include the author and date of publication, article title, journal title, volume number, issue number in that order. For internet sources, add a stable internet address to the source or the home page. Use a digital object identifier (DOI), if the site provides one. When a date is not available, use the date you accessed the information. Refer to the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide for more information and examples.

Design

It is now time to take all that great content and make it sing inside a web browser. Someone has said that "code is art", which should be a source of inspiration. We all need to aspire to write better code. HTML is one of the most basic document markup languages we use to display information in a web browser. The industry standards which govern proper web design practices is developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This organization is responsible for, among other things, creating a universally accepted XHTML language which has eliminated some of the inconsistencies that existed with HTML.

Truthfully, many of these standards may, in some instances, be ignored without necessarily showing up on a web page. Unfortunately, in other instances, they may and therein lies the rub. Our point is, don't get in the bad habit of taking liberties with your code, as it will catch up with and haunt you. There are countless resources available in books and on the web that we can use to learn and improve our web design skills.

The tools you will need to develop your website are very few. With a computer, a text editor, an image editor and a web browser, you can create a great website. These basic items and a firm understanding of XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets will make your content come to life.

The challenge most people have is learning XHTML and CSS. Admittedly, it does seem exceptionally intimidating at first and many would find Chinese calculus less threatening. This will pass if you force yourself to endure the initial shock of it all. Once your first web page is complete, your fears will disappear and soon you'll be saying things like "us Webmasters..." and "the difference between the web and the internet is...", so find a good book and dive right in.

Approval

Soon after you've recovered from the menacing fever and cold sweats, you will need to proof the design you poured your soul into for the last several weeks. Sound like fun? No, it's not. Let's put it this way, if developing a website were a rollercoaster, the concept would be the ride up the first hill and approval is the vomiting directly after the ride down. Unfortunately, it must be done.

Start by verifying the results in a browser are flawless. Eliminate any abnormalities by improving the markup. Establish a consistent theme with an acceptable colour scheme and font style. Check all the hyperlinks for performance.

Next, test the page in the last three or four versions of each of the most popular browsers on the market. They are Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. There are many other, lesser known browsers, but don't get carried away. If all your pages pass the big five, you should be fine with the rest.

Once the code is performing properly, you need to validate it through the W3C website. They offer a tool for web designers to validate their markup is compliant with industry standards. Fix the errors and consider inserting the "W3C valid" badge on your website once all the pages pass.

Finally, review all the content for grammar, spelling and style. Proof read the entire website once yourself and ask one or two friends to do the same. Remember to credit information referenced from other sources and provide hyperlinks as a courtesy to the author.

Launch

Okay friend, it is time...as the official Launch Director, you have the final "go/no go" launch authority. You will now need to choose your host, of which, there are many. The host you choose for your first website should be cost effective. There is no point in cutting your teeth on an expensive full featured hosting service where most of the services you are paying for are going unused. You can always upgrade to a better host later, if required. Avoid using free hosting, as they will only impede your progress and the amount of savings will be minor. A decent host with everything a small website with minimum to average traffic needs, will cost less than $9 per month, with a one year contract. Look for special offers, as they are always popping up across the web.

When you have your hosting service set up and your domain pointed or transferred there, you can prepare for going live. Be sure you have a complete back-up of all the information stored safely. Verify all HTML and CSS files are located in the correct directory with an image folder containing your images. Download and install the FTP Client of your choice, then proceed with uploading.

There you go Captain Internet, you have yourself a fully functional website ready for the entire world to enjoy. Congratulations, you should be very proud of yourself and your creation. It is an accomplishment only a small portion of the human race have conquered. Most choose to pay the experts to do the work for them and never get to understand how the whole process works. You now have the basic knowledge you need to speak to the world whenever you please.

Maintenance

Yes, it's us again...the source of all that exhausts you. Okay then, let's get right back to work. Spend a few weeks just getting to know your host and how to use all the different features they may offer. Once familiar with the control panel and their support service, focus your attention back on your website. Start to investigate a system of analyzing your site traffic. Most, if not all, hosts will offer logfile analysis for free, but the problem with this approach is the statistics are massively inflated. This is due to the recording of visits by search engine spiders and various other internet bots. The solution is the data collection service of page tagging which will require some additional code being entered into each of your web pages. This code is supplied to you by the service you sign up with. Regardless, this is useful information to have and should be monitored, collected and saved. Use this to determine which content is under performing and work to improve it.

When you sit down to edit your HTML files, make sure you create a copy for development. Keep a set of master files separate, untouched and safe. This will prevent confusion when uploading updates for your website. Once you have edited and tested the new files, go ahead with uploading them. After verifying the files are functioning properly, rename both the old and the new files so the new are identified as your master set. Then proceed to back every thing up properly. If you do this procedure every time you alter your website, you will have a collection of every version you've ever uploaded along with one master set safe and secure.

Performance Analysis

Following the basic accounting procedures outlined in the Monetization section will allow you to determine the financial health of your operations. Continue to keep an accurate set of records and analyze the financial transactions on a regular basis to better respond to flaws in your business.

We have given a general overview of the entire process of domain development, from registration through to launch. This guide only touches on the steps involved without expanding on the details and intricacies of each aspect involved. We will explore the details of each topic in this tutorial further and post these learning guides complete with free examples, tips, links and demos as they become available. Hopefully, this beginner's guide has been a helpful learning resource to get you started on the path to success. Thank you for visiting and please contact us at support@domaindevelopment.ca to share your thoughts on how we can improve your experience here at Domain Development.