14 Feb Website Project Planning Four
By Paul Barrs.
This is the final step of the ‘creation’ steps, and while most people who build websites for themselves are too easily apt to take the easier, shorter road, such should not happen here.
Even though the planning of your website project is by far the most important, this area should not be neglected simply because the ‘hard yakka’ is over. Further more, due diligence should be paid here just as much as in previous steps to avoid costly errors and time consuming mistakes.
Be warned, one slip-up in concentration here could inadvertently jinx your entire project until the error is found and then corrected.
So move though these steps methodically and carefully. The results that pay you back in dividends will follow automatically in the times to come.
Step Four:
* Create additional keyword introduction pages such as article pages; link them to home and main directory pages.
Note: Even though the terms ‘splash’, ‘doorway’, and ‘hook’ pages have been used in this plan; they each refer to one kind of traffic generation page only – a high quality / content rich ‘article / information’ page. While automated tools can be used to evaluate these types of pages, they should never be used to create them.
* Create and add the final content pages. In regard to WordPress sites, this is the copy paste of the already created txt files.
* Add / finalise all body content (text, images, etc.) to pages.
* Check each content page for required navigation scheme links. This should have been taken care of in the previous step where the initial template was created, but always CHECK.
* Spell check each page and upload. It is my personal belief that this should be done both by a PC application as well as by the human eye. Spell checkers DO NOT pick up all errors.
When pages complete:
* Update robots.txt with specific files and folders to exclude from spiders as needed.
* Run final link test to make sure no links are broken and all-important pages will load quickly. There are many online tools that can be used for this. WordPress user should be aware that often WP’s Tag directory pages may show up as broken links in a link report; not because they are ‘broken’, but because of the use of the ‘ in auto generated page links. Eg: www.yoursite.com will appear as ‘www.yoursite.com’.
* Test each page using appropriate web browsers (at least the current version or last 2 versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape and FireFox on PC and Mac platforms)
* Perform usability tests on pages and forms. This can be as simple as having a few non-technical people use the site. Can they understand the purpose of each section and do what you intended them to do? If not determine what changes can be made.
* On a large site, this can take the longest. Have your customer sign off on the work completed at the end of each week before you continue along.
* Once all pages are created then upload the doorway article pages. Alternatively you may choose to ‘drip feed’ these pages to the site. This is very easy to do with WP.
* Once site is complete invoice for the final payment from customer and have them sign off the project.
* Turn off robot.txt file full domain exclusion.
Get ready to enter a maintenance agreement with client… next.
