Redesign/Archetecture Question

[Funky Webmonkey]

I'm in the middle of a corporate WWW site redesign project for the IT consulting company that I work for. Right now our site is just plain embarrassing. It looks like one of the project pages from SourceForge.net. We need a site that makes people take notice and makes us look like a serious player in our industry.

Has anybody done a major makeover project for a Inc. 500 website? Can you tell me the process you went through? What kind of planning was done? How it was executed?

This is your chance to be web strategists circa 1999.

I've identified parts that need to be addressed like:

- Planning
- Content
- Corporate cultural changes
- Design
- Development
- Infrastructure (servers, CMS, etc).
- Execution

What else on this list am I missing? I have a presentation on this project later in the week and need to cover the bases.

[welo]

Here's something (http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/la/it/ipmnotes/ganttpert/dev-pert.html) which should help your planning. PERT and GANTT charts are mainly used to forumulate business models, yet could be readily applied to your project. Any extensive website is situated on prettymuch the same prinicples.

Something else I'd sling into the presentation is what software you'll be needing/using to manage the project. Something like TaskTimer (http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/la/it/ipmnotes/ganttpert/dev-pert.html) and its associated plugins, for instance. I'm evaluating this software now to use for an upcoming multi-developer project. Looks like the ticket. ;)

[Stefan]

Originally posted by Funky Webmonkey

Has anybody done a major makeover project for a Inc. 500 website? Can you tell me the process you went through? What kind of planning was done? How it was executed?


This interview might interest you
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/wired-interview/

It discusses the makeover of http://www.wired.com/

Another large site that was just recently redesigned is
www.w3.org

I think that's a good place to start :)

[Robert Wellock]

Well, looking at server-side technologies is a must as is considering possible site maintenance costs, rather than just one initial set-up cost.

The largest site I've just redone has approximately 40 pages and it would be too time consuming using notepad without a server-side solution, to prevent wasted keystrokes on navigation menus, etc..