Some people are not familiar with the multiple tasks that apply to web development, but web designers in Irvine, California sure are. These men and women work tirelessly on projects to ensure that Irvine keeps its standing in Orange County as the leading business community in web design. In order to make sure the product coming out of Irvine is the foremost leader, web designers have to follow the steps of web architecture. Just what is website architecture? Let's find out.

Website architecture is an approach to the creation and developing of websites which, like architecture itself includes functional, aesthetic and technical criteria. As in formal architecture, the goal is properly on the user and on user requirements. This demands particular attention to web content, a business plan, usability, interaction design, information architecture and web design. For effective search engine optimization it is vital to display a grasp of how a single website relates to the World Wide Web.

Because web content design, planning and management come within the scope of design methods, the traditional Vitruvian aims of commodity, firmness and delight can guide the architecture of websites, as they do physical architecture and other design disciplines. Website architecture is coming within the scope of Aesthetics and Critical Theory and this trend could accelerate with the advent of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. Both systems emphasize the structural aspects of data. Structuralism is an approach to education which has influenced countless academic disciplines that include aesthetics, postmodernism and critical theory. Web 2.0, because it features user-generated content, focuses the website architect's attention to the structural aspects of information.

"Website architecture" has the potential to be a phrase used for the intellectual discipline of organizing website content. "Web design", however, outlines the practical tasks, part-graphic and part-technical, of designing and publishing a website. The difference compares to that between the task of editing a newspaper or magazine and its graphic design and printing. However the bridge between editorial and production tasks is much more similar for web publications than for print publications.