I’ve recently become involved in assiting an organisation to add a little bit of technical rigour to their brief for the redesign of their website. As a part of this I’m developing some technical principles to guide the technical requirements. I’ve listed the principles below:

  1. The website shall be developed in such a way as to allow maintenance by persons other than the successful bidder.
  2. The design of the website shall allow future enhancements to take into account changing requirements, technology and standards without requiring a rewrite.
  3. The website shall allow the content to be edited and maintained by the client without the need to engage external parties to do so.
  4. The website shall be accessible to the widest possible audience and shall not prevent access by people with disabilities or access by persons using commonly used technology.
  5. The website shall be designed in such a way as to promote favorable ranking in common search engines.
  6. The website shall be designed to prevent modification of its contents by unauthorised users.

I think these form a pretty good basis for good technical website design.