Chapter 3 and 4: According to My Topic

As I've just posted my topic, I'm going to design it in conjunction with my readings in Garrett. Luckily, I won't have a fully formed strategy or scope just yet, but these chapters will help give my site direction because frankly: I don't know how to do my instructional topic. So content-wise, this site is an open book and this means that I'm going to have to be methodical in my approach: I cannot get caught up in what Garrett calls the "Web as Software Interface" side of design. Why? It's the aspect I'm most familiar with.

What are my site's objectives and what are my users' needs? Off the top of my head, my site objective is to "instruct those who want to design a dynamic photo gallery in PHP." I know Garrett doesn't like for features to creep into a site's objectives, but I think, in this case, I need to sacrifice feature flexibility (i.e. the use of PHP) for conciseness and approachability. I don't want to program it in .NET/ASP or ColdFusion because a) I don't have the time to learn those and b) I don't want to confuse my users. I'll also make the argument PHP isn't necessarily a "feature" because the website itself will not be driven by it.

What are my user needs? They'll be an advanced web user, but not necessarily an advanced or intermediate web designer. They'll need to be able to code websites, and be able to set up their own hosting service. They'll need to know how to set up a database, how to connect a page to a database, and how to program it to identify new files in a photo directory. And these are just off the top of my head.

How will I measure success? If my buddy, Craig, can do it without using a pre-scripted photo gallery! (Not a good metric, but not a bad start)

What is the scope of this project?
I think I can answer Garrett's two questions, "what am I building and what am I NOT building?" rather quickly. I am building website that will provide a foundation for putting together a simple dynamic photo gallery and I am NOT instructing someone on how to build a complicated or "feature heavy" gallery.

Complication: Here's the complicated part of this project: it's a website about a website. Right now, I'm having all sorts of recursive thoughts because what applies to one, the design of the instructional website, applies to the other, the website's content. My brain is spinning right now.

In my next post, I'm going to list my site's feature requirements (and not my topic's feature requirements).