Planning a website: how did you go about it?

[LilMunchie]

Basically, im still super beginner at web making- and im super excited and im already having a ton of fun!! but i was curious about how anybody here who has a fully fleshed out site went about planning / designing it? Right now im sketching mine out on paper, but im curious if anybody went about it a different way! and if you found any roadblocks when it came to making your site exactly how you wanted it? Heres my rough sketch of how i want to make my site look!

[Noah_S]

I knew from the start that I wanted a banner on the top and 3 columns under it, with the middle one being the widest and having the content, menus on the left and various stuff that I want visible on every page on the right. I wasn't skilled enough to build a template from scratch, so I started with a premade one that I modified. It introduced me to flex containers, and they're my favorite thing in CSS. The footer wasn't planned from the start, but I got so excited about rediscovering small graphics that I wanted them visible. But as they're not the main thing, I put them at the bottom of the pages for anyone who wants to look through them after finishing the content. My top bar with the light/dark switch and the jump to content and a greeting for signed in people was also added later. Jump to content needs to be at the start or it defeats the whole purpose, which in my case was to give people who navigate with tab a shortcut so they don't have to click through the whole menu before getting to the content.

[chilblands]

Yes I plan everything by paper  sometimes I fail to 100% execute my idea because 1) I do not have the skills or 2) it is unrealistic or 3) I thought of something better. In my opinion the layout is the skeleton, keep it simple and brief. What is more important is the content.

Attached are my recent sketch-up!

• Page outcome of idea
• Page outcome of idea
• CSS bear outcome (planned the bear to stick tongue out, changed to eye open on hover)