When you begin thinking about creating a Web site, you should follow a series of planning steps to make sure your site succeeds. Even if you are just creating a personal home page that only friends and family will see, it can still be to your advantage to plan the site carefully in order to make sure everyone will be able to use it successfully.

Deciding what your site goals are is the very first step you should take when you create a Web site. Ask yourself or your client questions about the site. What do you hope to accomplish by having a Web site? Write down your goals so that you remember them as you go through the design process. Goals help you focus and target your Web site to your particular needs.

After you have decided what you want to accomplish with your Web site, you need to decide who you want to visit your site. This may seem to be a silly question, since most people want everyone to visit their Web site. However, it is difficult to create a Web site that every single person in the world will be able to use. People use different browsers, connect at different speeds, and may or may not have media plug-ins. All these factors can affect the use of your site. That is why you need to determine a target audience.

As you create your site, you should be aware of the variety of Web browsers your visitors are likely to use. Where possible, design sites for maximum browser compatibility, given other design constraints.

Not all browsers see your web pages the same way. If you designed a great looking site using Microsoft Internet Explorer, try also viewing it in Netscape - it might look different ! Keep changing it until it looks right in both browsers.

Organizing your site carefully from the start can save you frustration and time later on. If you begin creating documents without thinking about where in your folder hierarchy they should go, you may end up with a huge, unwieldy folder full of files, or with related files scattered through a half-dozen similarly named folders.

You save a lot of time later in the process if you plan your design and layout before you actually begin working in Dreamweaver. It can be as simple as creating a mock-up drawing of how you want the site layout to look on a piece of paper. The important thing is to have a mock-up of your layout and design so you can follow it later as you build your site.

Another area where planning pays off is navigation. As you design your site, think about the experience you want your visitors to have. Think about how a visitor to your site will be able to move from one area to another.

Design the way your navigation will look. Navigation should be consistent throughout your site. If you place a navigation bar across the top of your home page, try to keep it there for all the linked pages.

Once you know what your design and layout will look like, you can create and gather the assets that you will need. Assets can be items such as images, text, or media (Flash, Shockwave, and more). Make sure you have all of these items gathered and ready to go before you begin developing your site. Otherwise, you'll have to continually stop development to find an image or to create a button.