Building Web Sites All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Conceptualizing Your Site

In This Chapter

• Deciding what types of pages you need

• Choosing the right delivery methods

• Creating printer‐friendly materials

Book II, Chapter 3 covers developing content. This chapter discusses how to present content to your visitors. You must keep some content in a database; you store other content as plain HTML pages. And you can consider several multimedia methods of delivery. Not every method is good for every type of information. You must determine what types of pages you need, how to deliver those pages to your viewers, and whether to include printable pages.

Deciding What Types of Pages You Need

The types of pages are static Web pages (plain HTML pages) and dynamic Web pages (pages that can react to site visitors; more on that in a bit). Different situations require these different types of pages. Either type of page can include multimedia elements. When determining what types of pages you need, consider the following:

• The amount of information you have and how you want to organize it: Some sites have only a few pages with some pictures and a little text. Other sites have massive amounts of information that needs a database (or more than one database) to manage it all. Most sites fall somewhere in between.

• How you want visitors to use your information: Do you want them to passively read, or would you like them to interact with the content? Do you want them to be able to download anything?

• Users' expectations: To get an idea of what users want ...