Creating a Website Outline | Examples & Process

Creating a website outline is a very simple and quick pre-production step that a developer, designer or any type of person can take. An outline comes in all different types of formats. Bullet points, small paragraphs, some even use their sitemaps or rss feeds for a template. It really matters on the type of person and what their work flow is. Having a website content outline gives you can idea of where your website is heading after the homepage. It can help in designing and development.

How to Start

Start Your Website

There really isn’t a how to outline a website template or tutorial, you can be as creative as you want. If you use your creative during this process, you will have more fun doing it. If you’ve done your brainstorming you know what niche or idea you want to portray. If you’ve thought of a site map in your storyboarding process then you have even more information and advantage. You have your main category, sub categories and how your page structure is going to look for your site. This will make the outline easier. You now know who your visitors are.
Some have used the a Sitemap Storyboard for their Outline.

Website Outline Template Example

Example

Your Structure Can Be Anything

Most website content outlines start with your home page then main category at the top of the list. The outline then flows down into the different sub categories and pages from there. Usually you have a bullet point structure for the outline, with indents for the different categories, subcategories and pages. Your website design outline layout can be anyway you want. Just focus on what works for you and what you will understand. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, but make it simple and easy to understand.

Used to Help You Keep Track

There isn’t a set way to do it or a standard way to create an outline. The purpose of a website outline is to help you think and keep track as you build your different pages for your website. It will help you visually how your categories and subcategories are set up. Maybe you’ll see something that won’t work. Or you find yourself with have extra categories or maybe not enough. Either way it’s a good exercise to do before jumping into development.

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Comments

You raise a good point, more often than not having a good website outline can speed up the development process significantly. I generally try to make a list of all the pages and different categories that the site will have and then try to give them descriptive names. Then I like to think about the navigation and then the different layouts for blog posts, pages, and the home page. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Josh

Nice article, thank you

Creativity lies beneath all your designs.Follow the procedure and create your designs,if this happens you could create a good design.

Thank you for posting this article. It is going to help me to effectively create a content checklist for my clients.

standard way to create an outline. The purpose of a website outline is to help you think and keep track as you build your different pages for your website. It will help you visually how your categories and subcategories

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