Thread

I am about to begin the process of having a website developed that will use EE as its CMS. I am not a developer or all that experienced with website development so I need some input on breaking out design from the actual development. I plan to use a designer to create the proposed design, layout etc of the site. They will provide Photoshop format outputs. I then planned to engage a developer to create the site with EE serving as the CMS.

Is there anything I need to consider when breaking the process up as I have proposed?

The site will be pretty basic as websites go but I don’t want to invest in design that won’t be usable by a developer.

Should I be concerned about anything here or is this an acceptable process?

It’s pretty normal to use two (or more) people to create different parts of a site, eg one person designs the visual bit (how it looks) and another to develop how it works.

One thing that will make or break your site is to make sure whoever designs the visuals has a good idea of your content, it’s structure, and how you want to display it all - without that they will be designing in the dark and you could end up trying to shoehorn your content in and making the site look messy or hard to use.

Content first!

Try to choose a graphic designer who has genuine HTML/CSS experience. Otherwise, they tend to produce ridiculously impractical designs.

As bluedreamer said, the most important thing to consider is the content and its needs. But also, when you are planning an EE site, it helps to consider the needs of a dynamic site, and how easy it will be to have repeatable chunks of information. A CMS often introduces more needs and design considerations than a static site.