The first stage in planning your site is deciding what you want the website to do.

This may seem a pretty obvious question but it is often a question that most website owners never seem to ask themselves. It is also fundamental to the success of your site.

So before you begin make sure you ask yourself these questions:

• Why do I want a website?
• Will I need to update the site frequently?
• Will I sell products from the website?
• Will I use the website to attract new customers?
• Will the website simply be a brochure for the company?
• What will my website visitors expect to see?
• Will I have private parts of the site?
• Will I publish a newsletter?
• How much am I prepared to pay?
• Will I be doing it myself?

Once you have a general idea of what you want from your website you can then move on to the second stage of deciding who will be doing what.

As with any project you can either:

Do it Yourself or Have someone do it for you, or a mixture of the two.

Generally speaking outsourcing will mainly be considered by business website owners but is an option regardless of website type- business or personal.

Outsourcing doesn't necessary just mean getting someone to do some work for you. It can, and often does, mean buying a package/service that does the work.

This is very common and even very experienced webmasters do this. As an example if you want a to establish a newsletter and your host doesn't provide one or the one it provides is inadequate you can either write one your self or use an existing autoresponder service.

Your level of expertise and how much time you are willing to commit will determine to a great extent how much you will outsource. Generally the more technically capable you are, and the more time you can devote, then the more you can do yourself.

In general there are three main site types. They are business,website business and personal. Although they have lots in common the approach to each tends to be different. Because commercial sites are designed to make money site owners are more prepared to pay to have work done than owners of personnal websites.

Regardless of whether you will be doing it yourself or having it done for you, it is worthwhile getting a basic understanding of what is involved. This doesn't mean that you need to become an expert but that you are familiar with the common technologies and what they do and when they are used.

The horror stories you read about with people paying thousands of dollars to get a fancy flash website that doesn't work can be avoided by just acquiring a little basic website knowledge before you start.

So before you start your site make sure you know what you want it to do and plan it accordingly. It will then be easier to know whether or not your website was a success.

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Stephen Cope is a freelance trainer and the webmaster at http://www.build-your-website.co.uk A site dedicated to helping you build your own website whether you will be doing it yourself or having it done for you.

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