The Lillster Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 Morning. I'm currently thinking about developing a new website, but in the past they have all failed due to rush jobs, and no planning. This time I want to do everything by the book. Basicly i've got a new idea for a website, and I think my website could be quite usefull. However, since it's going to require a lot of scripting (probably advanced) I need to know, how to put my ideas accross so that other people know what I am trying to accomplish, and therefore know exactly what I need. I've got a php coder helping me btw. That's why I need help on putting my idea across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shorty Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 Personally I think making a successful site will come down to: 1. very professional design, simple, tidy, stylish. 2. working with other people that care as much as you. this isn't a necessity but if you have other people updating everything will go so much smoother. 3. devote real time to it, and if it's really a big thing, money too. you can't have a successful website on 50mb of free webspace with a freeinterwebs.com/user/myhomepage URL. 4. advertising 5. php/a cms. basically you need to make it easy to log in and add updates that all look the same as all the other updates. 6. a hook, what can people get from you that they can't get from anyone else? 7. user generated content. even if its just profiles, blogs, or a few videos. web 2.0 is still where it's at right now. 8. patience and hard work. websites dont get huge overnight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lillster Posted November 3, 2007 Author Share Posted November 3, 2007 Personally I think making a successful site will come down to: 1. very professional design, simple, tidy, stylish. 2. working with other people that care as much as you. this isn't a necessity but if you have other people updating everything will go so much smoother. 3. devote real time to it, and if it's really a big thing, money too. you can't have a successful website on 50mb of free webspace with a freeinterwebs.com/user/myhomepage URL. 4. advertising 5. php/a cms. basically you need to make it easy to log in and add updates that all look the same as all the other updates. 6. a hook, what can people get from you that they can't get from anyone else? 7. user generated content. even if its just profiles, blogs, or a few videos. web 2.0 is still where it's at right now. 8. patience and hard work. websites dont get huge overnight. Thanks for the advice, but i'm wandering what's the best way to advertise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 No one actually knows how you get to the top of Google, but people seem to think that the best way is to have links to your page where you don't link back to them. So you could buy text adverts on other peoples sites (have a look at the for sale sections on http://www.namepros.com to see just how many are for sale for not that much money). And also submitting your stories to Digg.com and the likes. Free advertising. There are lots of places which give out Google AdSense vouchers too when you buy hosting which are very good because it makes your site come up on the first page of Google. Get your friends to visit the site everyday, put links in your forum signiture, update it regularly! Once a week isn't enough as, you need to make people want to come back. That's why social networking sites are so popular, because there's so much content on them and new stuff is appearing all the time. If you're site has a message board, don't have too many seperate forums in it as they will have very few posts in them at first and people will think they're dead (which they will be really). Have just a few, very general categories to make the place look busier. Have user-friendly URLS (ie. Mod-rewrite), so instead of having showthread.php?p=597670#post597670 make it, thread/threadname.html. Search engines like that better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emasher Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 What software are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirtynine. Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 Basicly, PLAN. Just because your working on a computer dosent mean you cant use paper, writing stuff down is a great way to organize you head and make stuff seem more accesable. I disagree with user content etc, as it depends on what the site is, for example, tv-links had no user content, alluc is all user content, tv-links was much easyer to use as it was structured and set up properlly well as all uc is all over the place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lillster Posted November 4, 2007 Author Share Posted November 4, 2007 Basicly, PLAN.Just because your working on a computer dosent mean you cant use paper, writing stuff down is a great way to organize you head and make stuff seem more accesable. I disagree with user content etc, as it depends on what the site is, for example, tv-links had no user content, alluc is all user content, tv-links was much easyer to use as it was structured and set up properlly well as all uc is all over the place. Yeh, I was thinking I should do everything on paper first. What i'm going to do, since there is quite a lot of things I want to do, which will take a long time to fully complete is, introduce one thing at a time. Instead of all at once, that way I can figure out what people like and don't like, and also put my site on the web quicker. I want to do the php coding on my own, so I get the experiance. The only problem is I haven't got much confidence when it comes to programming. I think I just need to keep at it. If anyone could give me links or advice on which php books I should buy, that should help me. Btw is it possible for me to have dynamic content on my site, and have the content on another site (i.e somebody posts the content on a forum, sort of like youtube - but this won't be flash.), that whenever that person updates the site, the content will get automaticly updated in the forum? I'd love to tell you my ideas, but i'm afraid somebody will copy them. And with me not being very good at php, they might end up doing a better job and faster than me. BTW my idea is quite original. (Well i've looked around and I can't see anything exactly the same). Thanks for the help so far. Motivation is my main weakness, so it's good to see people offering advice, which should keep me at it. What software are you using? I used to always use Dreamweaver, but now i'm trying to do everything using notepad. Which i'm finding really difficult. I have got a book though on HTML and CSS. But i'm having trouble with the graphics/tables side of it, and basicly anything else that is related to css. I think what i'm going to do is design the pages in Photoshop, and then work out the best way to represent that data so to speak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshMat Posted November 4, 2007 Share Posted November 4, 2007 Aw, before i read your last post my next question was going to be "what's your site about?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emasher Posted November 4, 2007 Share Posted November 4, 2007 I used to always use Dreamweaver, but now i'm trying to do everything using notepad. Which i'm finding really difficult. I have got a book though on HTML and CSS. But i'm having trouble with the graphics/tables side of it, and basicly anything else that is related to css. I think what i'm going to do is design the pages in Photoshop, and then work out the best way to represent that data so to speak. Why not keep with Dreamweaver? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Posted November 4, 2007 Share Posted November 4, 2007 Dreamweaver code is messy. Although I would highly recommend using it to write the code in as it colour codes it all, line numbers etc which makes it much easier to find stuff. You can save code you use regularly too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lillster Posted November 5, 2007 Author Share Posted November 5, 2007 I'm sill in the planning stages atm. So far i've done a basic overview of what needs doing and a mindmap for ideas. Is there anything else I should think about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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