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   Decide on an appropriate topic for your site by exploring your own interests and by searching the Web.

   Use all the techniques and strategies you have to search yourself and the Web for a topic that you know something about, want to learn more about, or even have a passion for. You're going to have to live and work with it a whole semester.

   Give a lot of thought to the issues of content and function.

   As you develop your thinking about your site, keep coming back to the issues raised in Information Architecture (page 11):

• What will the site actually be?
• How will it work?

   These two key questions will be both iterative and interactive for you.  As you think about one, you will get ideas about the other.

    Keep a record of your developing thoughts.

    As you research and browse the Web to critique other sites, keep the two questions above in mind. Keep coming back to you own ideas about content and architecture of your site. Keep a log of (i.e., write down) your observations and thoughts.

   Prepare a dynamic statement of definition for your site.

• Clarify the mission and vision for the site, balancing your needs and interests as a writer with the needs of a primary audience of specific users in their work.
• Determine what content and functionality the site will contain.
• Specify how users will find information in the site by defining its organization, navigation, labeling, and searching systems.
• Map out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.
      

   Prepare to make a presentation of your mission and goals to the class on February 2.

elizabeth j. cooper
  Office: Hibbs 315
  Hours: M 1-3:30; W 2-5
     and by appointment
  Phone:828-1331
  Email: ecooper@vcu.edu