As the owner of a website development company, I am often confronted with unrealistic project timeline (or budget) expectations by prospective clients.
The most likely reason for a less than feasible time/financial budget is that these folks do not understand how the process of creating a website from scratch actually works, and really why should they?
Unless you’ve been involved with previous web builds or work in a related tech field, the steps involved in the design and implementation of a site are more than likely a mystery to you.
Herein follows an overview of the steps it takes to build a successful and fully operational website from start to finish. If you work in the web sphere its stuff you of course know already, but have likely never summarized.
If you’re not a web person, please read on and learn some things about how websites are constructed.

While different providers will naturally have differing takes on details, the big picture remains much the same regardless of one’s choice of a preferred web vendor. The project will proceed along a path something like as follows:

Upon engagement the website provider will first endeavor to glean as much information as possible regarding the website requirements- the discovery phase. Requirements include but are not limited to- design elements, color scheme, imagery, branding needs, page structure, server side processes (eg e-commerce, subscriptions etc), page titles and hierarchy,overall coding approach and website mission.

The object of the game is to first define the website. How it will look, how it will flow, and what it will do.This is known as the planning phase.
There are 2 deliverables that in general will come before any design work takes place. The first is a sitemap , which in essence is the skeleton of a website. It graphically illustrates page names, page relationships, and onsite processes in an easy to digest diagrammatical format.
The sitemap will serve as the main blueprint for design and development efforts.

When the site map is fully established the designer will then move on to page wireframing. This involves identification of important on page elements and production of raw templates which describe the layout, functionality and flow of the primary website pages. The deliverable in this case might be created in Photoshop or Excel. This stage is sometimes omitted, depending on the nature of the project being tackled.

No development usually takes place until the main site pages’ look and feel (home, about etc) have been fully approved as page layouts by the end client. In order to program a website, you need to know what exactly it is you are programming.
So generally using Adobe Photoshop, the site authors will first design the website home page. This is the most critical page there is, is usually the first page users will arrive at, and effectively defines the look, feel and color scheme of the website.
Once the home page has been approved, its time to move on to designing interior pages, at least the most important ones. Secondary level pages may be logical extensions of other pages, so its not always necessary to create a unique design for every page on your site.

Now we’ve gotten to the point where we can move into the development phase. Time to start generating code?- not quite.
In order to produce html and css which are some of the the main building blocks of the internet, we first need to chop the photoshop designs into small components, a process known as slicing. So we will end up with elements such as logos, symbols, lines, shadows and so forth as separate images. All these images are destined for the site images folder where the html and css will order the parts into a cohesive whole, i.e. a functioning web page.

The writing of the code can be performed manually or utilizing a variety of freely available editing tools. Once coded the website will be well on its way to completion. However there are further steps required.

Unless the site is intended to be a static one, the developers now will implement dynamic programming language ,and build a content managed framework so the website owners will be able to perform updates without any coding knowledge. A static website is defined as one where the site stakeholders will not be in need of regularly updating their onsite content themselves.
In practice in today’s World, most websites being built are dynamic, using such open source content management platforms as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal- or custom engineered proprietary content management systems.
This is called website backend development and uses scripting languages such as PHP. In any case where somewhat more complex tasks than pure information provision are needed, such as e-commerce or user accounts, significant time investment in development of the website backend and user administration panel will be mandatory for success.

So the site has been developed- are we done now? No I’m afraid not. The site will need to be debugged and tested. For example if its an e-commerce enabled site one had better make sure the products can be purchased. If the content has not been loaded that of course needs to take place before website launch. And that content will need to be checked for typos and grammatical tragedies.

Pre site launch the database will need to be installed if database driven. E-commerce websites will usually require installation of a security certificate SSL and a unique IP address. Configure the web server correctly, upload the site files and the website is now in business.

Along the way there will have been involvement from some or all of these folks: designers, developers, project managers, copywriters, client relationship managers, quality assurance testers and the creative director.
Everybody has different roles to play, and those roles mostly come into play at different times.
To sum it up- don’t hope to start and finish a website over the weekend, and realize engineering a great online presence requires a lot of highly skilled hands.