Coordinating and assessing HTML production resources takes experience. What is the level of expertise necessary to successfully produce and launch your site?

Assessment and assigning of resources was handled in the Define phase of the project, however now is a good time to review and confirm that the team is suited to the job. Are they up for the challenge? Will you be creating HTML pages or templates? Preparation and organization will allow for efficient production—that is, setting standards to touch each HTML page or template as infrequently as possible.

Take a moment to assess the project status. Pre-production is a chance to take a step back and see where you are in regard to time, budget, scope and expectations. Determine how many hours you have budgeted and used thus far for all phases of the development process. Compare your initial projections to your current reality. Do you have enough time left to complete the site? Make sure the scope of the project has not increased due to additional wish list items and unforeseen technology issues.

Meet with the client to review project status. If you are in a design firm, be sure to outline any AC's (additional charges) as applicable for any client-initiated changes. Review audience needs (target browsers, screen size and connection speeds), technology (light scripting, plug-ins), content status (is the content going to be ready in time?) and design templates (will they need to be altered by the design team prior to production?).

Before starting actual production, take time to readdress the expectations, assumptions and deliverables originally used to determine the scope of the project.

Perform a time check to see how many hours have been used to date, and how many resources and hours are necessary to complete the site's production, through launch. The project was started with some assumptions—a certain number of pages or templates for the site, a certain amount of light scripting (for rollovers, frames, etc.)

This phase of production is usually one of the gray areas when estimating time. Each page or template usually takes from eight to twelve hours (sometimes as long as 2 days per piece for complex tables, frames or light scripting.) Subsequent pages based on a similar look and feel can be produced in a shorter amount of time. Multiplying out the template creation and then the actual page creation or back-end integration, days and resources can add up quickly. An original estimate of 100 hours can easily become 300 hours if the complexity of the site was underestimated.

Whether you work for a corporate Web team or a design firm, this time and resource reevaluation is necessary for managing client expectations, and will help you to better estimate future projects as you gain more experience.

At this stage of development, technical considerations may have changed from original specifications.

Readdress the technical requirements of the project. Revisit your basic technical requirements—target audience, screen size, browsers and platforms. Frames or no frames? Light scripting needs? Plug-ins? Is this a static or dynamic Web site? Will this site need to be created as HTML templates and then handed off to another team for additional production and implementation? Who is your contact for the application development, and what schedule are they on for testing and integration?

Make sure everything is moving in the right direction—a lot can change from the client's first thoughts to the current realities of site production.

Working with a team of HTML production artists—especially remotely over an FTP connection—requires careful coordination and organization.

If you have 3 or more people working on the HTML of your site, you will want to have some kind of established method of version control in place to avoid writing over files or duplication of efforts. Dreamweaver 4 has a Check In/ Check Out feature that enables you to require each user to check files in and out, along with a feature that enables you to include design notes for others to understand the purpose, status, and direction of the development.

Establish very clear methods to indicate when a file is being worked on, as well as methods of backing up all files, as there is always a chance of overwriting something that is being revised or modified.

Have a system. Be clear with the team. Organize and backup. Allow FTP access to key individuals only.

Organize your file structure and set naming conventions as established during the Structuring phase. Before you start, you will need to work with your HTML coders to determine how you will set up and maintain the site structure.

Failure to structure from the beginning may result in images in various folders, with duplicated files and general confusion. It can also wreak havoc with any Web applications or traffic monitoring that may be in place. A messy folder structure is something to avoid.

Think about how the site will need to be organized in order to be easily maintained and as scalable as possible. Agree on naming conventions for the folders and files within. Will all images be in the root folder? Will there be separate image folders for each main section?

As the project manager, your role is to communicate the client's goals to the production team as early as possible to allow establishment of clear methods of directory and folder structure.

How often will you be changing content? Daily? Monthly? Will it be an automatically posted change? How will you be archiving material? Who will be maintaining the site? How HTML savvy is the maintenance team? What tools will they be using? Understanding how often the site will be updated and the complexity of the updates will help to determine how the site will be structured and built.

If you have a highly complex site needing major changes on a daily basis, you will need to think about site maintenance and how it can be addressed during the pre-production phase in order to cover all needs and issues.

If you have a site changing globally weekly, you might want to think about creating your site using templates, style sheets or includes—separate HTML pages or data that is plugged into your site in chunks without having to rebuild the entire page. JavaScript, CGI and CSS (cascading style sheets, for 4.0 browsers and above) can also aid in automated updating.