Front Porch Design?

[tom sawyer]

I have a little old box of a house, nothing special architecture-wise. Split leve, sided, block basement walls. On one end of the house (the upper end with the bassement wall pretty much buried by the front yard), there is a small roof over the front door (which is centered on the end), with a poured cement floor about four feet wide, and an older sidewalk leading out to the road.

I would like to put a screened porch on this end of the house. My question is, should I pour a concrete floor, or can I just make it like a deck with a roof? I suppose I'll have to remove the roof of the current entrance, because it is only about 4' out from the house and I'd like to make the porch deeper than that.

Will pouring a slab for a floor, affect the basement wall? If I don't pour a floor, I'll have to remove the current small floor slab of the entrance because it is about the same height as the threshold of the front door, so I couldn't just put a wood floor over it.

If you could point me towards any plans or other online help, I'd appreciate it. I just found this site through a Google search. Thanks, Lennie