Rebuilding a website.

[shavers313]

Hello Everyone,

I'm helping rebuild my church's website and it brought up an interesting question. How do you rebuild or remake a website? What is the methodology of re creating websites? What should I look out for? Your help on this matter is much appreciated. Take care. :-) 

[administrator]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum! 

To rebuild a website, you have to learn web design. It's as simple as that. 

My web design course package will give you everything you need to learn to do that ... and more. 

PS: links are removed from posts by new members. 

Stef

[shavers313]

Hello Stef,

I'm actually in your web design class. My plan is to push through the course as quickly as I can and help redesign the site. The issue is because I'm such a novice. I don't know the best approach to take. Do you have any suggestions or plan of attack once I obtain these skills? 

P.S. 

How long do I need to wait before I can post links on the forum? lol jk 

[Andrea]

I recently rebuild a website for a local homeless shelter. I'm not aware of any set methodology, I simply looked at the old site, mainly content and navigation, and build the new site trying to optimize both. For example, the old site had a page called gallery with photo albums of events and another one called 'past events' which also had photo albums of different events. Now there is just one page for this stuff.

I did first create a draft version of the new site and stayed in constant communication with the guy in charge to make sure I stayed within the organization's expectations/needs, etc. Not sure if this really helps you, but overall, I find common sense and a practical approach can go a long way.

[administrator]

Quote

 Do you have any suggestions or plan of attack once I obtain these skills? 

Just do my courses. As you progress, the answers to your questions will become self evident. 

Stef

[shavers313]

Okay. Thank you everyone. 

Edited November 9, 2017 by shavers313

[shavers313]

It seems like there going to be using Wix.com and using WordPress.  They made me the web master. I can't wait to use my skills to start having the site look amazing.  :-)

[administrator]

Sounds good. Wordpress is  ever present. 

Congratulations!

Stef

[TylerW]

When doing a site refresh we do something like this:

Audit Existing Site

1) Audit current sitemap & site architecture (urls, links, titles etc) to be sure we don't create any dead end links or stupidly remove any high performing pages, or that we redirect things appropriately (although we try to keep existing structure in place as much as possible to keep external bookmarks or links flowing in and maintain continuity of seo performance).

2) Audit the current website copy (WORDS are a huge part of web design which many new designers tend to overlook). Collect all the website copy together into buckets, or at least get a solid idea of what is where, so you can quickly analyze it and re-arrange, delete, or plan for new copy as needed.

Strategize New Site

3) Strategize the new site design (if you're working with clients you need to do this based on client's business goals). Build a new sitemap, figure out what the function of each page is, what copy we will need (look at the old copy and decide what to scrap and what to keep, and what new copy we need), figure out what additional assets we might need as far as photography, videos, or technology we might need, plan out any advanced functionality, conversion funnels, etc. etc.

Basically we create a blueprint of the new site and everythign we plan to do, while looking back at the old site and deciding what to keep and what to throw in the trash bin.

4) Create and/or gather all of the stuff we need to build the new site. Ie giving the client homework to create the copy we need, getting photography done, etc.

5) Finally the fun part. Design & Build the site.

*** Careful if you are messing with DNS & Hosting setup. You gotta know what you are doing here or you can mess up email systems and other behind the scenes tech.

Good luck man!

Edited November 15, 2017 by TylerW