Production Planning, Continued

By the time a project goes into production, all the copy and art for the web site should be ready. I say "should" because although these are the building blocks of the site, I usually don't have all the pieces right from the start of production. Though I may not have everything, I still try to organize what I do have into a form that's usable for my purposes.

If your project manager has been nice enough to provide you with a detailed site plan, that can be a good starting place in organizing your production pieces. The site plan gives you an idea of the scope of the project and makes it easy to see if you have all the resources you need. I like to start off by going through all the copy I have and checking it off on the site plan. Once I'm sure I have all the copy, I can start getting it ready for production.

Preparing Copy for Markup
I'm sure you're familiar with the various ways that clients send copy. I've received copy as email, Quark XPress documents, handwritten notes, spreadsheets, and (in one case) as a huge Microsoft Word document containing all the text intended for the site. Since I don't want to miss any critical data, I like to break the copy down according to the site plan. I create folders for each section of the site and save all copy into its appropriate folder.

Since I'm breaking down all the copy anyway, this is a good time to convert everything to ASCII text so I don't wind up with any weird characters (which are caused by leftover formatting). Most HTML editors, such as BBEdit or HomeSite, offer the ability to convert files to ASCII with the click of a button. When you convert formatted files, such as Microsoft Word or Quark XPress files, make sure you save copies of the original documents so you can refer to them later for layout and style information. At this point, I rename files so that the descriptions make sense to me instead of to the client.

Homesite
Information about Homesite, an HTML editor for Windows 95.

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