This has been interesting. A question for you: Do you always do all this planning or are you doing it for the audience's benefit?
R

I think that I can answer this: YES. That MattyBonez is a planner! He thrives on the minute details and weighing opposing merits. All of the items listed above have been heavily discussed in our household.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Matt is an efficient and thorough(-ly geeky) machine. And this compliments and balances out my haphazard and "free-style", er.. style. So it's all good.

Hi Rachel, there are a couple of differences between what I am writing on the site, and what I do in 'real life'.

First, I generally consider all of the components as a whole. For the site, I had to try to break them back out into categories, so that it wouldn't be a jumble of mush.

The second difference is that I am doing some fierce editing. There are many other areas to consider in the design, such as designing for your audience, or researching other websites and design manuals for inspiration. I've glazed over some of this, mainly for scope. You could write a book on this (many have), and I am trying to cover the entire process in 7-10 posts.

ummm...wow

Test post... to make sure I put all the parts back together correctly.