Questions to ask before beginning your design

• What are the purpose and goals for the site?

• Who is the target audience for the site, and what do they want?

• Will your site production team be composed of in-house people, outside contractors, or a mix of the two?

• Who will manage the process?

• Who are your primary content experts?

• Who will be the liaison to any outside contractors?

• Who will function long-term as the senior site editor?

Technology

• What browsers and operating systems should your site support?

• Windows, Macintosh, UNIX
• Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox; minimum version supported

• Network bandwidth of average site visitors

• Internal audience or a largely external audience?
• Ethernet or high-speed connections
• Faster modem, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), or DSL connections

• Dynamic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and advanced features

• JavaScript or VBScript (Visual Basic Scripting Edition) required
• Java applets required
• Style sheets required
• Third-party browser plug-ins required
• Proprietary features of IE or Safari
• Special security features required

• How will readers reach the support personnel?

• E-mail messages from readers
• Chat rooms, forums

• Database support?

• User log-ins required to enter any site areas?
  
• Questionnaires required?
  
• Search and retrieval from databases needed?

• Audiovisual content

• Video or audio productions?

• Heather Woods
• Information Services
• Date Created: August 18, 2000
• Last Modified: June 5, 2003
• Expires: August 31, 2003