A Website about Building Websites

The Structure

When making a website it is important to first decide its purpose. The content will be generated and displayed based on this purpose. Once you have discovered the purpose of your website it is important to think about user experience. Before you start to generate content, you should think about how you want the users to interact with your site. Think about how a user would navigate your site or how many buttons they need to press to get to the page they want (hint: the fewer the better). Another aspect of user experience would be what you believe your audience to be. Who will be using your website? What is your audience hoping to achieve from your website. So after you have figured these things out it the next step is to think about the structure of your site. Jesse James Garrett, the author of The Elements of User Experience, Second Edition: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond. came up with the five planes that make up the structure of your site.

The Surface Plane
The Skeleton Plane
The Structure Plane
The Scope Plane
The Strategy Plane
As one might assume, this is the plane that a user can see wherein rests the visual elements of your site: text, pictures, and the like.
This is the plane associated with arrangement. This plane optimizes where you place things on the site be it buttons, controls or even pictures.
Is the abstract to the concrete skeleton plane. It determines how the user interacts with the site. Neatly put: "The skeleton plane might define the arrangement of navigational elements allowing the users to browse categories or products; the structure would define what those categories were" (Garrett)
This is the plane that defines the dimensions of your site; basically what your site can and can't do. The features of your site.
This is where the intended use is defined, what both the creators and the users want the site to do. This plane, in turn, determines the scope.

While some of these planes should be worked on in a certain order it is important to think of them all together. Because they all work together and must fit together like gears in a machine. If they don’t function together your website will have problems. The planes also largely influence eachother, decisions you make for one plane effect decisions in others.