This question is mainly for Wendell, or anyone who has worked on large websites.
A little background on why I'm asking this question:
A few Inbox's ago, Logan and Wendell mentioned that a good way to start in the industry is to work for local companies, helping them. I've been looking to bolster my resume for college applications soon and figured that I'd ask my friend if his parent's company needs a new website. I emailed them, and they want me to work on it. I have done some personal projects, but nothing too big. They mainly want an updated design, not any back-end coding.
How do you start making/updating a large website? What CMS do you use? I would assume that it depends on the project, or company type, but is there any standard CMS that is tried an trusted to work with most projects? (I will probably stick with the one they use currently, because they already know how to use it.) Do you use a basic CSS like Bootstrap? Should updating the design be only in the CSS with a bit of rearranging of elements?
There are various open source (free) CMS out there, Drupal, Wordpress, etc. Choosing the right CMS depends on the client/project though. Drupal for example has a steep learning curve but is extremely powerful, Wordpress is a little more user-friendly but not great for bigger, complicated websites.
Also, when you're using a custom theme with a CMS it's going to be even more work as you will have to integrate the cms backend stuff, etc. You can use Bootstrap to make themes for both Wordpress and Drupal (or any other cms) but it requires a bit of work. It's also pretty common for people to buy pre-built themes for whatever their CMS is and tweak it to their liking.
Every large website project I've ever been involved in all started with the same thing. A list of features and planned content. From there both back end coders as well as front end designers can get to work. Since you're just doing a cosmetic update, it makes things much easier. You already know what features and content are there, so all you have to do is spruce things up.
Just pop into photoshop (or whatever image creation software you prefer) and start mocking things up, accounting for all the features and content. Once you settle on a design, you can slice up the image and/or transfer the colors used to your CSS and start work on your custom CMS template (for which there should be plenty of tutorials out there).