This section is about starting your website. This is the easier bit. Getting your information, working out how your audience sees your information and realising your strengths. Make sure you read this before you begin your website. It’s important that you know all this before the rest.

Quick Links

• The Site Content
• What is the Site About
• What Information is Being Given
• What is the Most Important Information to Give?
• How to Categorise the Information
• How Will the Information be Given?

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The Site Content - RETURN TO TOP
Okay, so this is where it all begins. This is where you understand the meaning of your site, collect the information and order it so it makes sense to your audience and what your audience would prefer to see in your website. To learn more about information management keep on reading.

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What is the Site About - RETURN TO TOP
This is most likely the most important thing to know and should be well known before you even start coding your site. This is the topic of your site, which almost all information should be based on. For this site my theme is obviously ‘How to Make a Website’. The next step would be to recognise the information you’ll be giving. Carry on reading to learn about that.

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What Information is Being Given - RETURN TO TOP
This is all the information that you are providing for your audience. To find this out it’s best to take notes on what your website is about and develop further from the info you gather so you can find all the information possible. I’d suggest writing notes because this helps you remember all of what you come up with because even the smaller details will be written down. Keep reading to understand how to find your more important information.

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What is the Most Important Information to Give. - RETURN TO TOP
For every site there is always a scale of importance on what information you should give. The best information to give out first is the information you think is most wanted by your audience, or in the order of which is is needed. For example, this site is given as different levels, first giving out the information on how to start, followed by the information on how to develop what you have further. It would be stupid if I gave out the 'developing further' information out before I told them how to begin. So make sure you give out the most informative and useful information out first. Another good way to organise the information for the viewers is to categorise the information, which you can find out about below.

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How to Categorise the Information - RETURN TO TOP
This is an important skill to develop. If someone wants to find information about Elephants their first instinct would be to look at the "Animals" category, simply because it makes sense to find it there. This is what needs to be recognised when you give the information. It helps immensely to give categories for the viewers so they can find the information they are looking for more efficiently. There are limits to categorisation though. If you have too many there is more of a chance that the information the viewer wants is on too many pages, making it take ages to find what they want. Also, if you include too little there is very few sections but there is too much information in one place that the viewer needs to search through. It's a good idea to find an area between this where it's not too hard to find what they need.

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How Will the Information be Given? - RETURN TO TOP
This is another stage in making the website that should be put into consideration. The audience may be a specific age and you should create the website so that the audience the site is aimed at will find it interesting.

For more information on how to display your site so your viewers will enjoy it, see the Viewers' Perspective in Design Tips, but first I suggest continuing on to Understanding Your Audience.

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Click on the button below to go to Understanding Your Audience