Everyone's guide to building a website the proper way

What do I mean when I talk about building a website "the proper way"? I'm not going to talk about any one technology in any depth, but what I am going to talk about is how to understand what you require from a website in order to help you make website creation decisions.

Understanding what your requirements will be as time goes by is really important now because the decisions you make will stick around in the form of consequences.

One of the first, and most critical mistakes I think people make when setting out to create a website is incomplete research. I'm sure that whoever you are, you've no doubt heard of a friend, colleague or acquaintance that paid far too much money for a web presence that was... down right awful. This is a terrible pity and I hate to say it, but the person making the payments should have spent more time researching different options before reaching for their wallet.

So poor research can lead to unnecessary expenditure, but there's a more insidious problem with this scenario. Getting other people to develop your website can often take control out of your hands. Control is absolutely critical and most people cede it to someone else right from the word go in exchange for expediency. Online website builders (even if they are completely free) are the worst culprits because you often don't even get access to your own database other than what you can see via the website. What happens if you want to move your content to an enterprise level solution because your business has taken off? You can't because the data is out of your control.

With expense and control in mind there are still a fairly wide range of options available. No doubt you will come across offers to build a website cheaply and this deal will give you a design, plus five or ten pages of content that you can use anywhere. Sound like a plan?

Actually, not. Are you sure you are never going to need more than ten pages on your website? Absurd restrictions like this should be seen as an insult to your intelligence and nothing more. It's unlikely your website will ever amount to much if it is limited to ten pages - Google will soon realize your content is completely static and push your pages down the rankings. Furthermore, you are likely to incur more expenses to increase the page number, and without doubt you will want to do this at some stage. Flexibility is key.

With the above points in mind (no expense, complete control, flexibilty) you can start narrowing down the field. Any solution you choose should ooze quality and boast elegance and simplicity to boot - research who else is using it and what they have achieved with it. My personal preference is for open source systems such as Drupal and Site prebuilder as these meet the above criteria and some. There are a wide range of other solutions available so keep an open mind.