Preparation for Website
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So now that you have dragged yourself to create that new website you’ve been wanting, what do you need to get started with your website?
1. Purpose/Idea
The most important thing you need to create a successful website is a central idea/purpose for you website regardless of whether it is a personal website, shopping site, group site, or site to showcase your mom’s cooking. Once you have a good purpose or idea for a website, you are eons ahead of many web designers.
Many people simply start building a site with a vague concept like “a basketball site” and start littering a web page with basketball images and scripts until it’s cluttered and looks like a myspace page. To create a good site, you have to define what the what the site will do and how it will do it. For example, if you have a basketball site, are you using it to idolize your favorite team? If so, how will you idolize them? One possibility is to give running commentary after each game you watch with another page of player profiles and one last page for wallpapers you’ve created. Although this is simply one possibility, it serves as an example of the depth you need to explore for the central purpose/theme of your website. Even though people eventually get around to knowing what there website is for, doing this early and essential planning will save you hours of designing, scrapping and redesigning your website.
2. Motivation/Work Ethic
This is a pretty obvious and well versed adage. You need to do everything NOW! I hesitate to say anything other than now because of the simple fact that once someone is faced with an overwhelming prospect, they usually give up and wander off to enjoy leisure time. If you have no problem with motivation and work ethic, that’s wonderful. If not, you can try setting small goals. There must be an overarching goal you have for making a website. So divide it into steps and make it a habit to work on your site a little bit everyday. Perhaps you buy the site the first day, upload a content management system (CMS) the second day, and create five articles the next day. This way, you can keep yourself focusing on small reachable chunks.
Even now, keeping my work ethic is the hardest part for me ;]
3. Knowledge
That’s what you’re here for! 
4. Next Step
1. Web Hosting
