Why planning the site is just as important as creating content

When I first sat down to develop a plan for this website, I needed to take into consideration more pages and elements than I have in the past. As a longtime web developer who had been out of the loop for a while, I soon understood that the LAMP stack alone was not going to work for this project. My life had expanded to many new areas, and when I took a step back and looked at the big picture I envisioned my life less like a path and more like a wheel.

I decided that the main website would need to be a hub and that the other pages would branch out from there. I didn't have all the time in the world to build the new site either. Between our busy schedules and the fact that my husband needed his website completed quickly, I needed to find a website template that would allow me to get this done this task done efficiently. With a full life that has cost me a lot of my free time I also sought a design that leaned towards being evergreen. This would allow me to keep it live without frequently updating it.

This not only meant that I needed to become familiar with the new web template structure, but also that I would need to find a web hosting service that supported Node.js. I was actually relieved to give up some the tasks of coding middleware and working on the back end development. What I didn't expect was how much time it was going to take for me to develop the entire front end of the website.

My suggestion to anyone who is creating a website from scratch is to think about your parts of your life, the ones that you will be representing digitally, like family members.

My suggestion to anyone who is creating a website from scratch is to think about your parts of your life that you will be representing digitally like family members. Ask yourself if you will be sharing the website with anyone in your family or organization, and then draw up a map of all of the pages that will be needed. Figuring out the index or homepage of your website takes a bit of research and planning. You may need to go back to the drawing board a few times. However, having a solid foundation that will stand the test of time is worth it.

Side hustles, interest pages and blogs are all examples of items that need their own web page or section. In the past,on a personal website you could just add links to these items and then just have links to your social pages. Now there are social pages, groups, vlogs and other links that are specific to those things and need to be accessed separately.

Just like the branches of a tree that grow according to need, a hub-centered website allows you to flexibility to add more parts of the site as your life or business develops. And the best part is you don't have to keep going back to redo the code.

If you're familiar with using GULP or Node.js, website template engines like PUG offer these capabilities. There's still a lot of manual work that's involved, but in the long run it keeps your information and your links far more organized and professional in appearance.

The most important part of any website is making sure that it authenticaly represents your family, group, organization, etc. Transparency remains a critcal part of any public representation. Your website and links, as personal as they can seem, are very noticeable. Therefore, giving the navigation some logical guidance is a necessity, not an option.