I recently took on an website project as a means of putting together some of the side skills I am picking up, you know XHTML, CSS, PNG and other alphabet soup. However before you can build a professional site, it is important to start with planning. Here are the items I picked up on planning and come back for more as I go through the complete workflow.

Here are the steps in the planning phase.

Objective: Why are we building this site? Who is it for?

Competitive Analysis: Not just direct competition of the business, but also from a site design perspective who do we want to benchmark against.

User definition: Who is going to be using the site?

Sitemaps: what will people be doing when they get to the site?

--> Process Flow: What information is going to be provided?

--> User maps: How will it be accessed? How will it be displayed?

Elements common to all pages e.g. Footers, Logo and Call to Action

Wireframes

2 types of wireframes – planning wireframes (use PowerPoint or Visio); Graphic design wireframes (Photoshop PSD files)

Typography – Font, Color, Layout

Technology:

Static content – XHTML or Flash or Silverlight

Images – PNG, JPEG or GIF

Video Animation – Flash Silverlight

(Hosting for Video Animation is another issue you will have to deal with)

Downloadable files? – pdf or word

Database – MS-SQL, MySQL or XML/XLT

Scripting Language – JavaScript, ASP.Net, Java

Overall, remember the best tool is the one you know best.

OVERALL PROJECT WORKLOW (Based on what  I know now :) )

Planning –> Resource gathering –> Building –> Testing –> Repeat.