"J. Atwood" wrote:

Hey Zopers,

I am looking for some good guidelines in designing, spec'ing and developing large complex websites. Anything like guidelines, steps, howtos, etc would be much appreciates. From theory to practice.

Thanks, J

Not zope specific, but of a high quality and worth reading even if it is biased, is philip greenspun's book on web publishing... http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/books/panda Kapil

"J. Atwood" wrote:

Hey Zopers,

I am looking for some good guidelines in designing, spec'ing and developing large complex websites. Anything like guidelines, steps, howtos, etc would be much appreciates. From theory to practice.

The first book on this subject that opened my eyes was 'Secrets of Successful Websites', which in particular offers advice on the many pitfalls that a web project can face (with case studies), and reccomended procedures for handling and/or avoiding them. It's getting a bit dated (1996), but still has a lot of valuable advice. Two O'Reilly books that I have found very helpful are 'Information Architecture' and 'Designing Navigation for the Web', both of which will help keep your sites well organized and easily navigable by end users. Another good book is 'Website Usability - The Practice of Simplicity' which will help keep your sites users happy and productive. A recent book that I've found useful, though not as original as some of the others I've mentioned, is 'Great Web Architecture'. I have other, more specific suggestions, but it would help if you could say at least what types of sites you're attempting to design. BTW, I heartily concur with the recomendation made by Kapil: 'Philip and Alex's Guide to Website Publishing' is a monumental tour-de-force, and should definitely be read by anyone who wants to work in the web industry, even though I think that some of his technical reccomendations are a little close-minded (ie. 'Use Oracle and big Sun Iron'). I hope these help you as much as they did me. Michael Bernstein.