• Idea(s): every website starts with one or more ideas, or concepts for the site. Sometimes this is the product of a single person's vision, other times it is a full blown team effort just to decide what should and should not be included in a website.
• Planning: there has to be a plan for realizing the ideas in a systematic manner.
• Technical: It is easy to get hung up on just this part, but as should be apparent from this list, the technical aspects of bringing up a website are only one small part of the total effort, and skill set needed.
• Graphics Arts: Every site needs some kind of graphics. This is a unique skill that may be more rare than the technology skills necessary for website creation, and it is certainly one that is harder to "fake".
• Markup: Somewhat related to graphic arts. Involves an understanding of the capabilities of web page layout techniques, and of fonts and their use.
• Creative writing: Sites need content. Preferably creatively written content.
• The Content Problem (SME’s): the website owner will usually be the "Subject Matter Expert" for their site. In some cases they will also provide the creative writing skills, in others they may not be skilled in that area.
• Testing: The technical and content people will naturally do some testing of the site as they create their parts, but often their focus is too narrow. Every site needs to have at least a couple of people who were not involved in the original creation of the site try using the site to make sure that it is understandable and useable. This would also involve checking each link on the site to make sure it goes where expected.
• Team skills: All of this requires teamwork.
• Commitment: Need we mention that none of this will happen unless there is commitment on the part of the team members.

We will also need people who can do the following for us:

• Site monitors: keep an eye on running websites that they are up and running, that links still work correctly, and that the sites are being kept up to date by the owners, follow the site in the Search Engines, etc.
• Help desk: people to learn how to use the content creation and editing tools well enough to provide help to site owners who encounter difficulties maintaining their content.