Starting New Sites or Revamps

[anon]

I think it's easier to start a new site then to revamp an old one... Revamps take a lot more energy because you have to go through all of your old information, rewrite it to make it sound better and less choppy at times. I also think its a lot more fun to make new ones as well. I do like to go back and update the media and new information if a new game or info comes out about the subject, though. :3

That's totally true! At the same time, if you have your old information backed up, you wouldn't have to do all that research since it's right there!

[Jessica]

My choice to even consider to make a new shrine for something is pretty much based on two things. How much I like/connect with the character and if I actually have anything of substance to talk about on the character. I really liked the character Kuroh from the anime K, but could I actually talk about anything thing substance to warrant a shine? Probably not. (I think this is why I've been so bad at actually uploading a new shrine, because I can't find enough to talk about that satisfies me)

And if I actually find something, then I pretty much always make the layout first. I need that visual to organize my thoughts on what I want to talk about and cover on the subject.

[Sofia]

Being the organisation freak that I am, I always outline my content. Actually I usually prepare some sort of "documentation" before doing anything else. It may take a while to collect all the files/books/references/etc... that I need, but this process helps me a lot in defining how to organise the content later.

After the documentation is done I may already have a clear idea of all the pages to write (as it happened for my Serial Experiments Lain shrine), although most of the times I come up with a potential list of pages that can change as I develop the content. I also keep notes on each page's status, especially if the site is scheduled to be updated or revised in the future. I find that revamps can be extremely time-consuming so having some sort of idea of what needs to be done is useful to speed up the process.

I used to start making the layout first because I'm terribly slow at them, but it happened more than once that, by the time the site was ready to be published, I no longer liked the layout I had made...and I had to re-do it from scratch -.- I do like to have a site title before beginning to work on a new project, though. I'm not good at picking titles on the fly and a couple of times I risked to drop out from a marathon because I didn't have a title to put on the layout...not nice!

[neo]

I have a notebook I purchased specifically for my domain (:
At the top of each page I write which site it's for and write down anything I want to include or add to the site, as well as a 'to do list'.

I doodle a couple of ideas for layouts and write down different CSS tricks I'd like to do or try out.

I also write out what I will transfer to the actual files before I type anything.

Archaic, but it works for me ;D.