Audience

Who will the users of your site be? Will they only be readers, or will they also be contributors? Will your site be public-facing, or internal to an organization?

Outcomes

What will your users want to do when they visit your site? What information, interaction, or services are they seeking? What are your objectives, as the site owner, for your users? How will you measure whether your site is succeeding?

Content and site features

Once you know your audience and your outcomes, you can start identifying the content and site features that will help your web site users accomplish their goals (and yours!).

Does your site require highly-structured content items such as a browsable catalog of products? Do you want your site visitors to be able to interact with your content by leaving comments or ratings, or through other interactivity? Do you need a blog, a discussion forum, or forms to gather data from your site visitors? Do you have a large library of existing content that you want to migrate into Plone?

Business rules

Many web sites implement 'business rules' which vary from the simple to the complex. A simple business rule can be 'pages need to be approved by a manager before going live'. A more complex set of business rules can be all the logic associated with an online store.

What business rules will govern the content and features on your site? Will certain sections of your site be restricted to certain users? Will the content need to be approved before publishing? Are your business rules very generic, or highly particular to your organization?

Graphic design, branding, look, and feel

Plone provides a spares, modern, out-of-the-box look, but most web site projects require some level of customized graphic design. Plone can be made to look like almost anything, if you are willing to spend the time on the design and implementation.

How ambitious are your design requirements? Is there an existing brand identity or other graphic design elements that you need to incorporate? Who will be responsible for the creative design work?

Integration with external systems

Many organizations have existing IT systems that they want Plone to interact with, such as a centralized directory server for user logins, or an existing relational database system. Plone 'plays nice' with many types of existing IT systems, but it's always wise to identify any integration requirements up front, because such integration often involves custom configuration and coding.

Hosting/deployment

Once you've built your site, where will you deploy it? How much traffic do you expect? How will you back up your site? Who will manage the server that hosts your site?

Who will maintain and edit the site?

Web sites are living things, and require ongoing care and feeding in order to remain healthy.

Who will provide the ongoing content creation, editing, and maintenance that your site requires? Do they have the resources that they will need to get the job done? Will they need training on using Plone?