The Five Planes
Hello and welcome to "How to Build a Website," brought to you by an extreme amateur. Here I will be talking about the basics for building a webpage.
But, first you'll need to know what kind of page you want to create. What factors into this process is the purpose of the website, how you want the website to look or be formatted, what you want your audience to get out of using your website, and so much more.
These factors include different decisions you will have to make as a creator. For these decisions you will need to use The Five Planes: Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope, and Strategy.
THE SURFACE PLANE
This is what the user would first see on the website itself. This includes everything that the user would be immediately interacting with on your website. Elements that are functional or interactive like pictures, text, links, or buttons.
THE SKELETON PLANE
Next is the skeleton of your website. This includes how the elements mentioned above, that your user will first see, are organized on your website.
THE STRUCTURE PLANE
While the skeleton defines the organization/placement of elements on your website, structure defines how the user navigates through each element. This deals with how the functions are arranged in the skeleton plane.
THE SCOPE PLANE
Scope deals with the different features that will be included in your website. What is needs to be included for the functionality of the website and for your users to get the best use out of it? This is also determined by the strategy of the site.
THE STRATEGY PLANE
This is a question of what you, the creator, want to get out of the website as well as what you want your users to get out of using you website. What is the point of your site? What are users going there to do, see, or learn? This is where you figure out what kind of website you would like to create before you start on any design or layout aspects of the site.
A Few Helpful Websites:
- 100 Creative Ideas For A Website
- 20 Content Ideas For Your Website or Blog
- 10 Rock Solid Website Layout Examples
Now that you have an idea of what goes into creating a website, we can move on to HTML Basics.
