SITE DEFINITION AND PLANNING
This initial stage is where you define your goals and objectives for the Web site and begin to collect and analyse the information you'll need to justify the budget and resources required. This is also the time to define the scope of the site content, the interactive functionality and technology support required, and the depth and breadth of information resources that you will need to fill out the site and meet your reader's expectations.

Production - What is the purpose and goals for the site, who is the target audience for the site and what do they want, who will manage the process?

Technology - What browsers and operating systems should your site support, what is the network bandwidth of the average site visitors, dynamic HTML and advanced features, how will readers reach support personnel, database support, and audiovisual content?

Web Server Support - In-house Web server or outsourced to Internet Service Providers (ISP)?

Budgeting - Salaries and benefits, staff training in Web use, database, Web marketing and Web design, Outsourcing fees, ongoing personnel support for site, ongoing server and technical support, database maintenecae and support, new content development and updating.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
At this stage you need to detail the content and organisation of the Web site. Inventory all existing content, describe what new content is required, and define the organisational structure of the site. Once a content architecture has been sketched out, you should build a small prototype of parts of the site to test what it feels like to move around within the design.

Site prototypes are useful for two reasons. First, they are the best way to test site navigation and develop the user interface. Second, creating a prototype allows the graphic designers to develop relations between how the site looks and how the navigation interface supports the information design.

SITE DESIGN
At this stage the project acquires its look and feel, as the page grid, page design and overall graphic design standards are created and approved. Now the illustrations, photography, and other graphic or audiovisual content for the site need to be commissioned and created.

Research, writing, organising, assembling, and editing the site's text content is also performed at this stage. Any programming, database design and data entry, and search engine design should be well under way by now. The goal is to produce all the content components and functional programming and have them ready for the final production stage: the construction of the actual Web site pages.

SITE CONSTRUCTION
By waiting until you have detailed site architecture, mature content components, and a polished page design specification you will minimise the content churning, redundant development efforts, and wasted energy that inevitably result from rushing to create pages too soon.

Once the site has been constructed, with all pages completed ad all database and programming components linked, it is ready for beta testing. Testing should be done primarily by readers outside your site development team who are willing to provide informed criticism and report programming bugs, typographic errors, and critique the overall design and effectiveness of the site.

Fresh users will inevitably notice things that you and your development team have overlooked. Only after the site has been tested should you begin to publicise the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address of the site to a larger audience.

SITE MARKETING
Your Web site should be an integral part of all marketing campaigns and corporate communications programs, and the URL for your site should appear on every piece of correspondence and marketing collateral your organisation generates.

You may also find opportunities to cross-promote your site with affiliated businesses, professional organisations, broadcast or print media, visitor or local information agencies, real estate and relocation services, Internet access providers, and local city or town directory sites.

Highly publicised local events featuring a Web page hosted within your site will boost local awareness of your Web presence. Site sponsorship might also interest local broadcast media as an interesting story angle.

TRACKING, EVALUATION AND MAINTENANCE
An abundance of information about visitors to your site can be recorded with your Web server software. Even the simplest site logs track how many people (unique visitors) saw your site over a given time, how many pages were requested for viewing, and many other variables. By analysing the server logs for your Web site you can develop quantitative data on the success of your site.

Detailed logs are the key to quantifying the success of a Web site. As you develop data on the usage of your site you can begin to refine the site, improving or eliminating site content that attracts few readers, and developing more of the content for sections that generate the greatest user response and site traffic.

Don’t abandon your site once the production "goes public" and the parties are over. Someone will need to be responsible for coordinating and vetting the new content stream, maintaining the graphic and editorial standards, and assuring that the programming and linkages of all pages remain intact and functional.

Links on the Web are perishable, and you'll need to check periodically that links to pages outside your immediate site are still working. Don’t let your site go stale by starving it of resources just as you begin to develop an audience - if you disappoint them by not following through it will doubly difficult to attract them back.