Planning your website
This page is for website creators at the start of a new site. It turns the decisions Exponential asks of you into seven planning steps, in the order the product needs the answers, and ends with a planning sheet to fill in. Project managers who run larger projects will find the same steps, with roles and budgets, in Planning an Exponential project.
Contents
- Why the order matters
- Step 1: goals and audiences
- Step 2: content inventory and site map
- Step 3: the content model
- Step 4: sites, addresses and languages
- Step 5: design
- Step 6: features
- Step 7: hosting and operations
- The planning sheet
Why the order matters
Some decisions are cheap to change later and some are not:
| Decision | Change later | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Design, templates, stylesheets | Easy | Templates are files; an override can be removed (Template overrides) |
| Menus, layouts of landing pages | Easy | Settings and the layouts editor |
| Content classes (adding fields) | Easy | A new attribute is added to every object of the class |
| Content classes (changing a field's datatype) | Hard | The stored data belongs to the datatype; a change means migrating content |
| Siteaccess layout (URL, host, port) | Medium | Settings, but links, certificates and search engines follow it |
| Languages | Medium | Adding is easy; removing a translation deletes content (Content languages) |
| Database engine | Hard | A move means an export and import |
So plan the content model, the languages and the database with care, and keep the design flexible.
Step 1: goals and audiences
Write down, in one sentence each: what the site is for, who visits it, what they should do there (read, contact, buy, subscribe, log in) and how you will know it works (see Visitor statistics and analytics).
Step 2: content inventory and site map
List what content exists and what will be written, and draw the tree. The method is on Site map and content inventory. The result decides the folders of the content tree (Structuring the content tree).
Step 3: the content model
Group the inventory into kinds of content and give each a list of fields. Prefer the classes a site package already ships (Article, Folder, Image, File, Product ...) and add only what is missing. Method and examples: Designing your content model, Content classes for websites, Choosing datatypes for your fields.
Step 4: sites, addresses and languages
Decide:
- How many public sites (brands, regions) from one installation. Each is one or more siteaccesses (Setting up several sites in one installation).
- How visitors reach each: by path (
/de), by host (www.example.de) or by port; the installer offers all three (10.2 Siteaccesses and site addresses). - Which languages, and which language each site shows first (Building a multilingual site).
- Right to left? Arabic or Hebrew content needs an RTL-ready design (Right-to-left sites).
Step 5: design
Choose a starting point: a shipped theme, a theme you adapt, or your own design in an extension (Choosing a design or theme). Plan accessibility from the start (Accessibility for site builders).
Step 6: features
Tick what the site needs; each line is a page of this section:
| Feature | Page |
|---|---|
| Landing pages edited visually | Landing pages with the layouts editor |
| Contact or feedback forms | Forms with the information collector |
| Newsletter | Newsletters with cjw_newsletter |
| Shop | Running a shop: overview |
| Search | Site search |
| Members area | Member registration and members-only areas |
| RSS | RSS feeds for your site |
| Tags | Tagging content with eztags |
| Custom logic | Application creators: start here |
Step 7: hosting and operations
Decide where it runs and who looks after it: web server (Velocity, Apache or nginx), database, backups, cronjobs, updates (Hosting requirements for a website, Maintaining your website).
The planning sheet
Copy this into your project notes and fill it in.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Purpose of the site, in one sentence | <answer> |
| Visitors and what they do | <answer> |
| Kinds of content (classes) | <answer> |
| Number of public sites, and their addresses | <answer> |
| Languages, first language per site | <answer> |
| Design: shipped theme, adapted theme or own | <answer> |
| Features (forms, newsletter, shop, search, members, layouts) | <answer> |
| Database and web server | <answer> |
| Who edits, who approves, who administers | <answer> |
| Launch date and who signs it off | <answer> |
Tip
Install a demo site first and click through it with the people who will edit the site. Seeing the administration answers half the questions above (Your first site, step by step).
Related pages
- Site map and content inventory
- Planning an Exponential project
- Running content modeling workshops
- The launch checklist
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.