Drafting a Plan in Java

Creator Code 39 in Java Drafting a Plan

Are you publicizing a political candidate Trumpeting your favorite cause Looking for a job Selling shoe polish Notice the verbs in each example They re the key factors in determining your site s purpose, as opposed to its topic

Just having a topic isn t enough you need a purpose, too The topic is merely what the site is about; the purpose is what the site does Say, for example, that you want to create a site about penguins Okay, that s a nice starting point You like penguins they re cute, unusual, and pretty interesting; many people share your interest in them But why do you want to create a Web site about them Do you have something to say Do you have information to give, an opinion to share, or a particular point of view that you want to put across You don t need to have a PhD in aquatic ornithology to create such a site Maybe you just like funny-looking birds that swim But you still need a purpose, or the site just won t work out in the long run Perhaps you spent ages plowing through the search engines, and you ve gathered together the world s greatest collection of penguin links But why did you go to all that trouble What s your purpose If the purpose for creating a penguin site is for your own personal enjoyment, you really don t need to do much with the site In fact, you can just create a Web page on your own hard drive or even settle for leaving the links in your Web browser s bookmarks If you do want your page on the World Wide Web, however, you need to take into account the needs of your potential visitors, as well as your own needs for creating such a site Suppose you re putting your penguin page on the Web for the purpose of sharing everything you know about these birds with the world How does that purpose change your approach to site design You need to include more on the Web site than a bare list of links, for one thing Everything you do with the site must help people understand its purpose If you re setting up your own domain name, for example, you want to pick one that clearly describes your site s content such as wwwpenguinfactscom (Grab it quick it still wasn t taken at press time) The purpose of your site trickles down through each step you take in creating it You want the title of each page in the site to specify how it supports the site s purpose The textual content of each page needs to lead naturally into some specific aspect of the topic that furthers your goal Each graphical image must be just the right one to drive home or emphasize a critical point

Who are the people you expect to visit your site What geographical or cultural groups do you want the site to appeal to Without at least a general idea of your potential audience, you can t have much of an idea about what type of site to create

If data is available about the audience for similar sites, you want to track it down But where do you find it Surprisingly, most of it s available from the people you re competing with (Even if you re not running a commercial site, similar sites are your competitors) Anyone who s been involved in any type of corporate intelligence work would be shocked at the way people on the World Wide Web casually throw around valuable information, instead of keeping it under lock and key Many sites offer links to their visitor data Even a quick perusal of the server logs (which automatically record information about visitors) can provide you with priceless insights into the sort of people who visit sites similar to the one you re creating If the sites you want information on don t list links to their log data, send an e-mail message to the Webmaster asking how to access it Most Webmasters aren t the slightest bit security-conscious about their customer data, and you may be surprised at how many of them are more than willing to spill the beans about their visitors