Next think about what main categories of information/news you'll want to highlight, to begin planning how you will lay out and navigate your site. Major sections of your site should only be a click away from the home page.

Good site design often starts with a flow chart, or storyboard. The sketches show what sections and subsections will flow from the home page, what individual pages will flow from each section, and how they will relate to each other.

Typically, main navigation for major sections will show up consistently throughout the site—along the top of a page.

Often, designers will plan out their home page and section fronts in minute detail before building the site, then create style sheets to support their plan. The storyboard shows where the navigation bars will go, where pictures and text and external links will go, and what color schemes and font styles will be used to ensure consistency of colors, navigation and fonts.

When laying out your home page, be sure to put your strongest pictures, graphics and text on the opening screen. 

Make sure your combination of colors and text are easy to read.

When planning a site structure, remember that main sections are often physically separated from one another by folders you'll create on your computer. Stories within a section go in that folder. These folder names show up in the Web addresses when you click on the stories. (For instance, national stories might go in the national folder, and thus have the world "national" in their Web addresses.) Photos may be put in a folder called photos; graphics in another called images or graphics; audio in a folder called audio. The home page is typically not in a folder; it stands alone in a story template, for ease of navigation and Web address naming. The home page is often named "default.html," "index.html" or "front.html," for clarity.  

To see how a folder affects the Web address, or URL, of a section or a page within that section, let's look at a big and well-respected U.S. site, CNN.com: