Website Technologies - Website Planning
Website planning needs to consider what website technologies the site will require or incorporate.
Ask yourself, "What website technologies do I need?"
What Website Technologies Do I Need?
The website technologies required will depend on the type of website you are building and what type of audience you have decided to target and accommodate.
Website Planning for Sites Involved in Ecommerce
Website planning with regards to Ecommerce would have to consider website technologies such as shopping carts, secure servers, customer payments and shipping issues.
- Are you hosting your own shopping cart or using a third party shopping cart?
- How are my visitors going to pay for the merchandise?
- Does my web host have secure servers or will a third party service be required?
- How is shipping to be handled?
Website Planning - Communication Website Technologies
Website technologies for communication with the target audience would include email, auto responders, email forwarding, mailing lists, guestbooks, forums, bulletin boards, chatrooms and/or blogs.
- How many e-mail accounts are required?
- Do you need Auto Responders?
- Email forwarding?
- Is there going to be a mailing list?
- Should the website include a guestbook, forum, bulletin board, chatroom or blog or use a third party for these features?
Website Planning - Advanced Website Technologies
Advanced website technologies may be at an additional cost. The type of database, web programming type and whether FrontPage extensions are used can all affect the cost of website hosting.
- Does the website need a database? SQL or MySQL?
- Are you going to use ASP, PHP or some other web programming feature?
- Are FrontPage Extensions required?
- Will there be any Web 2.0 applications used?
Website Planning - Website Graphics
The size and type of website graphics used on a website may not exactly fit in the website technology catagory as far as a technical issue but if the website uses a lot of images then a large amount of webspace will be required. Images use a lot of bandwidth so having the technology to reduce/optimize images does come into play.
- What graphics are going to be included? Flash? Animated gifs? Static graphics?
- Are your existing graphics (logo etc.) in a suitable format for the web?
- If you use Flash or some other media requiring special software is your target audience going to already have the software installed on their machine? Are there going to be different versions of the media for the different types of software? These extra website technologies do require more website hosting space and bandwidth.
Website Planning - Webspace Host Operating System
Once the website technologies are decided on that will be incorporated into the website you will have to look for a web host that has the correct type of operating system. Website technologies such as PHP and MYSQL usually are used on a Lynx operating system. Where as ASP, SQL, .Net and Front Page extensions are Microsoft specific technologies and are usually on a Windows based server.
- What operating system will your hosting company have to have?
- Can the website technologies chosen be run on the operating system offered?
All of the above influence the type of audience you target, affect your hosting costs.
If you found this web page a useful resource for your own website please link as follows:
What website technologies are required to accommodate
your target audience?.
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