Generic Site Design

For your consideration here is a quick model of development for a complex data driven wibsite or web tool. I would love some feedback, thanks!

Stages
  • Concept Development
  • Data Design
  • Graphic Design
  • Interface Definition
  • Server Coding
  • Template Coding
  • Testing

At the onset of development both Graphic Design and Data Design are started. They depend only on on the Concept but may be adjusted later in the development process.

“Interface Definition” is a loose concept of what all of the button presses, forms elements, and notifications are that constitute the ability of a user to operate the website. Knowing these things helps avoid confusion between the person building templates and the person writing server side code and should also be explored fully by the graphic designer. This step comes after the data design stage and is highly dependent on having a solid feature set from the Concept stage.

Templates can begin immediately after graphic design or often earlier with some overlap as the design is being finished.

Server Coding starts after the Data Design and will parallel Template Coding as each affects one another for the rest of the development process. One part of server coding that is worth noting on its own is Vendor Integration. This means making the developed site/tool talk to or work with outside tools.

Testing happens at the end and will necessarily impact Server Coding and Template Coding. The test – fix – test loop is to be expected.

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