Project Planning

Clients and developers work together to define the project and project deliverables. Includes these steps:

Requirements analysis

• client goals, target audience, detailed feature requests and as much relevant information as you can possibly gather

Project charter

• summary of agreed upon information
• define navigation
• gain access to servers and build folder structure

Determine required software and resources

• cms
• plugins
• designs
• stock media
• Mock-Up Design

The design stage involves taking the information gathered in the planning stage and creating a visual representation of a design or selecting an existing design.

Design Elements Planning

• confirm design requirements
• identify design solutions to meet requirements

Mockup Developed

• colors, sidebars, headers, menus, footers
• logo requirements
• media plan

Design Testing

• elements are put into place and tested
• necessary changes are made
• development

Content Management System Installed and Configured

• plugins installed and configured
• theme installed and configured
• pages built
• relationships developed (categories, tags, keywords)
• portfolios created

Fill with Content

• content provided by the client or writer are added
• media is uploaded

Testing and Verifying

• review all content
• inspect and test plugins, widgets, and extensions
• Project Launch

The purpose of the launch phase is to prepare the website for publication. This requires reviewing and testing design elements, interactivity and features and, user experience.

Polishing

• identify parts of the website that could be improved in small ways

Transfer and testing on live server

• site is moved from development server to the live Web server
• website goes through the final diagnostics

Final cross-browser check

• Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, iPhone, BlackBerry
• Hand off to client
• provide documentation for the website
• copy of database and files
• copyright assignment for created and purchased collateral

Project close, final documentation

• final payment is due