Planning is Fundamental
You wouldn't build a house without blueprints. You also wouldn't move into a place if you couldn't fit any of your fabulous stuff in it, so you would probably first make floor plans and take measurements. A website is no different.
Since you've already thought about what you want to include in your site, you just need to think about how you're going to organize it. So...it's time to start drawing.
Create a Site Map: We use anything from graph paper and a pencil to Adobe Illustrator, or Microsoft Visio to create a "site map" of the different parts of the site and how you get from one section to another. What you want to create is a plan: how each page links to others, where natural groups form, and how you want to have the user move through the site.
Name your Sections: Think about sections of the site like file folders--some people call them buckets or silos of information. You can name them something that visitors to your site will understand like: "Home," "Stories," "About Me," "Archives" (older stories maybe), "Kittens Of Evil" (photos). On the other hand, you may prefer to use clever or intriguing names that visitors may not get at first. For instance, instead of calling a section with old stuff "Archives," you might call it "The Vault."
Navigation: Usually, the names of the sections are used in the site navigation. As you probably know, the "Home" page is the main page with links to each section, and each section (e.g., "Archives") has an "index" page with links to all the stories or photos or other stuff in that particular section.
Page Layout: Once you've mapped out the big sections of the site and how they related to each other, you'll want to start thinking about all the things that the every page will have: a header, a footer, a navigation label ("You are Here: Home >> Stories >> Almost Killed by Falling Chipmunk"), etc. Then, think about the sections: what is specific to each page in that area? Links back to the "Home" page, a table of contents for the archives, "thumbnail" images of the Kittens of Evil that can be clicked for the full size picture. It helps to create diagrams or "wire frames" of each page.
To help you get started, we've included an idea of how we get going when we're starting to plan the layout of a new site--notice that's it very general, but all the major elements are accounted for.
Only when you can see each page and all the elements in your head or on paper, should you really sit down and start design and coding.
You wouldn't build a house without blueprints. You also wouldn't move into a place if you couldn't fit any of your fabulous stuff in it, so you would probably first make floor plans and take measurements. A website is no different.
