1. Determine your motive for wanting a web site; what are its objectives? Is it educational, an information resource, an advertising ploy etc? In a professional capacity you may find that a web site is needed to support departmental development plans.
2. What do you expect to gain from hosting a site? A bigger clientele? Better use of the service you already offer? Happier regular customers? Are your expectations achievable?
3. Is the site going to be cost effective? Is there a cheaper and more efficient way to disseminate information? Will people be genuinely interested in your site and will they use it?

1. Value yourself. Study access figures of similar sites to yours to evaluate their usage - is it really worth spending all the time and effort on creating a site that is value-less?

2. Review competitors web pages. Study sites of similar style, structure and content to the site you have in mind to design. Note what makes the web pages good and bad i.e.
   1. Funtionality - Does the page serve it's purpose? Is it printable? Do you leave the page feeling satisfied?
   2. Accessability - how easy were the pages to find? Has it got so many new gadgets that an older browser can not cope? Are there good links into the site from other relative resources? Is the URL a memorable size and structure?
   3. Navigation - Are there sufficient navigation tools? Can you always find what you are looking for? Were you constantly wondering how to get out of a page or how to jump back to a different topic?
   4. Content - Is the content legible, clear and intuitive? Is the content relevant to the title of the page, or was the title misleading? Was the content structured well, into well defined, understandable topics?

3. Consider your platform. HTML pages must be viewable on as many browsers as possible. Most "text only" browsers have become redundant. Nontheless, when designing you must make provisions for all types of browser, for example by always ensuring that you have alternative text (<ALT>) for every image you display. This will also relate to the many people who tend to keep "images" switched off for faster down load time). In practice, Netscape and Microsoft Explorer now dominate the browser scene. However, each is available in many different versions, which may react differently to the same html code. Remember too, that web pages look different from machine to machine, so what looks great on a PC, may look dreadful on an Apple Macintosh and vice-versa.

You must be able to look objectively at your planned site and decide how you will assess it's quality. Ideally, the site should:

1. Comply with a pre-defined "house style"
2. Meet HTML validation standards
3. Be consistent with good practice regarding web publishing
4. Comply with netiquette.
5. Be up-to-date and well maintained.

A maintenance plan is an important part of your over all strategy in developing your site. A well thought out site will need less maintenance than a poorly designed site. We will talk at greater length about how to maintain your site later in these guidelines, but at this stage you should at least be thinking about the following points:

1. How is the site going to develop? Do you already have expansion plans? If so they must be accounted for in your maintenance strategy.
2. Who will maintain this site?
3. Will this task be added to their usual daily tasks and if so is this target achievable?
4. Who is your back up 'maintainer' should something go drastically wrong in your regular maintainer's absence?
5. How often will this site need to be maintained? Is it a daily task, or a monthly task etc?
6. Allocate time slots for maintenance and stick to them. Allow for extra time for development and expansion.
7. If maintenance is a problem then you should design your site around this.

There isn't going to be an awful lot of point in creating a web site if you do not have a publicity strategy for marketing your site. You need to be thinking about where and how you are planning on advertising your site, and getting people interested in it. Read the later section 'Selling your site', for further information on publicising.

1. Design your content, don't just write it. You must remember that content counts, this is crucial. Most visitors spend less than ten seconds at your site unless you grab their attention straight away. It is a must that you provide solid information, effectively utilised artwork and well-maintained links. Making readers do two extra clicks before they find out what you have to say, will lose you three-quarters of your audience. You need to give your viewers a compelling reason to come back. The web contains millions of sites to see, and you definitely want yours to be one of them.

2. Make the pages speak for themselves. The title of the page (situated in the <HEAD> tags) should be as self-explanatory as possible. This is the title that appears at the top of the browser window and is also the text that appears in the bookmarks/favourites list. Don't use abbreviations that are obvious to you and not to others; i.e. 'wsp'. Instead, label it fully, such as "Welsh School of Pharmacy Home Page".

3. Make every page usable out of context. This is important so that a reader isn't lost when he comes in "through the back door". Make the contents of each page clear at the very top of the page, as many viewers will access your pages from search engines, and on many occasions by accident. If the page is untitled, or does not indicate it's content clearly, the reader is likely to exit.

4. Each page should ideally contain a consistent 'top and tail' style scheme. The page should consist of:
   • A logo, or standard title at the top of each page, which is thematic over all pages.
   • An informative signature at the bottom of each page, signalling a contact name, telephone number, email address, job title and status of the person responsible for the page. e.g.

   This page is maintained by Joanne Woolley

   Multi-media Designer

   WCPPE

   Email: