Do plan first

Before beginning to create your web pages, take a little time to plan what you intend to do. There are several questions you should ask yourself before beginning. What is the purpose of my site? What message do I want to send to my visitors? What kind of audience do I want to cater to? What page format do I want to use (header size and placement, font size and type, etc.)? What do I want to use in the way of graphics (icons, buttons, lines, etc.)? What kind of writing style do I want to employ (formal, informal, humorous, technical, etc.)? Once you've answered these questions, you'll have some guidelines to follow in creating your page, and you'll be able to present your information more effectively.

Do include a MAILTO: tag

If you really want your visitors to respond to your pages and send you comments and suggestions, don't just say "E-mail me at [email protected]", provide them with a way of E-mailing you while they're still visiting. You can do this with the MAILTO: tag. One way of providing this is to include the following somewhere in the body of your page:

Please E-Mail me at: YOUR_MAIL ADDRESS_HERE

Now your visitors can easily respond to you without ever having to leave your page!

Do provide a navigator bar

On the pages that you create, provide a navigator bar so that your visitor can easily move around your site. A navigator bar should allow your visitor to move easily from one section to another within a page, or to easily move from one page to another. The bare minimum for a navigator bar should be one that provides a link back to your main page.

Don't use click here

Don't say "Information about Blah Blah Blah is available by clicking here". Instead, say something like "Information about Blah Blah Blah is now available".

Don't use lots of font styles

Don't overuse font styles in YOUR page, it makes it very DIFFICULT FOR YOUR visitor to read. Use BOLD, ITALICS, etc. to draw your visitor's eyes through your page, not to overwhelm them with your font style knowledge.

Don't use large in-line graphics

Don't use large in-line graphics and/or image maps on your pages. Rather than impressing your visitors, it will more than likely upset them as they wait while that large graphic loads. Instead, provide a thumbnail and link to the graphic so that your visitor can choose to load a graphic, rather than forcing it upon them.

Don't use excessive external graphics links

If you want to include a lot of graphics on your page to spruce it up, use graphics images that are stored in the same directory as your pages. Don't use an excessive number of links to graphics images that reside elsewhere on the Internet. Every time you include a link to an external graphic, the visitor's browser has to find the DNS of the link, contact the server, connect to the server, and finally load the graphic. This slows the loading of the page considerably. If you really want to include external graphics links, keep them to a minimum to help your pages load faster.