Before you start building your website, it is best to do some planning. You'll need to have a strategy for naming files and folder organization, determine the target audience, build a flowchart of your website, sketch the design/layout of your website, and collect the elements needed to build your website.

Depending on the size of your website, you can wind up with a large collection of images and HTML files. It is important to set up your site using folders and subfolders so that it is easy to manage and find all of your files. A common method would be to have one main folder for your website, upon opening the folder you would see your HTML files and other folders, like, images, source, video, and flash.

Naming your files is an important aspect of web design. Some Suggestions:

1. Filenames should always be lowercase.
2. Keep the filenames as brief as possible.
3. If a space is wanted, use an underscore (_) instead.
4. Always save your files with the correct extension.
5. Be consistent with file extension. Always use .htm or always use .html.
6. Make the filename meaningful. Don't save documents as "untitled1.htm" or "page1.htm."
7. The homepage should always be saved as index.html

Before you go any further, you should determine your target audience. You have the subject of your website determined, ask yourself - what do you want this website to accomplish? Is it for entertainment, education, commercial? Who do I want to visit my website? Adults, teens, children, senior citizens, male, female, teachers, lawyers, etc.? Once you have answered these questions, you will be better capable of the next step.

You will need to create a flowchart of your website. This flowchart should show all of the pages that your site will have, and show the hierarchy in which they are linked together.

The next step is to sketch your design and layout of your website. Before you start coding or building a webpage with a web editor, you need to know what you intend your page to look like. Where will the main contents be, the navigation, the pictures, advertisements (if any)? You'll use the information in the rest of this website to help with designing your site. You'll need to determine your color scheme, your fonts, and apply alignment, contrast, proximity and repetition.

Your last step if to collect all of the information, images, and elements, you will need to create your website.