Planning a web design project from scratch

I can imagine what it must be like to be a newcomer to web design and trying to get a new website setup on a sensible budget. Planning how to approach the design of your website with the many options available can be a daunting task, even for someone with a degree of experience.

The place to really start is to think about what purpose the website is going to serve. Here are a few design/functional considerations to think over -

• Am I offering a basic web brochure or do I plan to sell something?
• Am I offering a product or service or both?
• How comfortable am I with doing my own design and updating it?
• What features and functions will I provide to my visitors?
• Is my target audience one which might respond well to community building, in the form of blogs and forums, or not?
• Where do I see my website headed in the future, say in 12 months then 24 months, do I need some scalability?

If you plan to throw a quick company brochure together and forget about it, I would suggest using a free HTML editor, registering a low cost hosting plan and going from there.

I wouldn't recommend using a shared or free hosting plan, since it's not going to help your chances of getting picked up by Google or any of the other search engines. You can buy good hosting for less than $100 / yr and it's worth the investment.

If you are looking for features and functions that are scalable, I would recommend -

1 - For a products/services type website - Joomla CMS

2 - For a community/blog website - Wordpress

JOOMLA - lends itself to future scalability and options for expanding the features of your website through its many plugin modules.[more on joomla web design] [more on Joomla modules and plugins for extended features]

WORDPRESS - is easier to learn and use than Joomla, but you'll hit a roadblock if you plan to add more functionality beyond a basic website with blog.