1) Navigation: Keep it simple (KISS), and make sure it's consistent from page to page. No matter where you place your menu bar -- either at the top or down the side -- always include a small text menu at the bottom of every page. If you're one of those people easily impressed with Flash, don't design your navigation with it. There are still some people who don't have or want the plug-in, so they won't be able to navigate your site. Besides, search engine spiders can't read it, so won't be able to spider the individual pages of your site if the navigation is done in Flash.

2) Privacy Policy: With all of the concern over privacy on the Web if you collect any type of information from your visitors (even if it's just an email address) you need to include a privacy policy. There are many online templates that will help you to create one easily. Once made, post a link to it on every page of your site.

3) Contact Information: Nothing drives me more insane than having to search through an entire website just to send the owner an email. Post your contact info at the bottom of every page of your site, along with your email address. Don't make me fill out a whole form when I just want to send a simple comment. Include your email address, hotlinked and ready to go.

4) Logos & Graphics: Please keep your graphics down to a reasonable size. No one wants to wait two minutes while your huge, beautiful logo loads onto the screen. If you must use a lot of graphics to get your point across, I've got one word for you: Compression.

5) Fonts: Remember if you stray from using the standard fonts that everyone has installed on their computers (such as Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman) the viewer won't see your fonts as intended. Your users' computers will display your site in their default fonts. Stick to standards. If you must have a certain font used you'll have to turn it into a graphic to maintain its look.

6) Make It Sticky: Include interactive features if possible, such as live news feeds. Check out http://www.moreover.com for tons of news feed topics you can paste into your site for free. Use chat rooms, discussion boards, etc. You want to create a sense of community where people will want to return.

7) Newsletter: If you're going to have a website you need to offer a newsletter, even if it's strictly going to be about sale items, specials or site updates. You need to start collecting a list of your visitors' email addresses so you can keep in touch with them. Ezines help to keep your site fresh in the client's mind and helps to establish trust and credibility. For more on how to start your own ezine see http://www.ezineuniversity.com

8) Browsers: You'd be amazed at how differently your website appears in different browsers. Make sure you take a peek at your site in Netscape and Internet Explorer. Recent stats show IE has about 80% of the market share, but you'll still want to make sure the other 20% can view your site without any problems.

9) Resolution: This is a highly debatable subject. "What resolution should I design for?" The norm these days seems to be 800X600 although there are still a small number of people limping along in 640X480. Look at your site in different resolutions to get an idea of what I'm talking about. If you don't mind letting the small majority scroll right and left, I say go with 800X600 (that's what I do) and it still looks acceptable to those surfing in mega resolutions of 1024 and higher.

10) Index Page: This may seem like a given, but I'm going to mention it anyway. On the very first page of your site (the homepage) the first paragraph should answer the "5 W's"; basically telling them who you are and what you're offering. You'd be amazed at the number of websites that leave this out; making me think "what do these people do, and what's in it for me?" You need to answer these questions and do it fast. Surfers are a very impatient group. Stop them before they click away.

my god, did you get suspended and you need the word count cause that seems like an awfull lot of nothing and maybe should be posted in the tutorial section or something.

Something like that. Anyway, it's a copy from http://www.addme.com/issue180.htm (it was down so here is a link to the google cache copy).

But instead of being just negative about the source, let me also point out how wrong the article itself is (or at least part of it).

Point 2: When you browse around you are already giving out a lot of information, like which browser you are using, what OS you are running, how large your screen is and how many colours it can display and so on and so on. Unless you have a large number of people who register for some reason and you actively collect data they are providing actively (like names, email adresses and so on), you really don't need a privacy policy.

Point 3: Don't post your email on your site, definitely not on every page as is suggested in the article. That's just asking for spam. Put up a contact form instead, protect yourself from spammers and scammers.

Point 5: Use CSS to set a preference list of fonts. So for whatever element(s) you are setting fonts, do something like: "font-family: palatino, georgia, sans-serif;". That way people who have Palatino see it with Palatino, otherwise they get Georgia and otherwise they get what they have set in their browser as their standard sans serif font.

Point 6: Just because you have a website doesn't mean everyone should post things on it. It depends on the site you have and not every site should have a chatroom.

Point 7: See point 6. If you don't need it, don't do it. No one wants email from you if you have nothing to say.

Point 8: Replace 800x600 with 1024x786 and 640x480 with 800x600. In my experience most sites still get about 30% browsers at 800x600.


Those points were the worst. But the other ones were okay-ish. The article is obviously hugely outdated, and it insults me that djleli didn't even bother to change the most obvious points (640x480 screens? get real) when he copied and pasted this article without giving credit.


To everyone who copies articles and posts them without giving credit just to up your post count/hosting credits:
Just rewirting the article and adding some personal opinions (a bit like what I just did) takes just a few minutes. Doing a little work and making something worth reading isn't too hard. Please don't copy, please post your own ideas. It's alright to copy a piece if you give credit. But ripping someone elses work is just too low.

Well, here goes my opinion

1. Text should be visible and readable. Try not to use background images for text-areas and the text color should be darker. Also, avoid Times New Roman and that kind of fonts...
2. Every image on your site should be there for a reason. Also, "alternate text" isn't there without a reason. Maybe someone has a slow connection a doesn't have time to download the image. So, try to use alt tags on every image and be precaised with 'em.
3. Navigation should be clear, simple and accesible for everyone (if you are not making a site for special group of people with enormus IQ ). Good way to help your visitors find what they want is a search tool.

This is for beggining.. . Maybe I'll post something new in a few days.

Greetz!

hehe , quite some tips for newbies

This seems pretty helpful to me.=S I can always use helpful info.

• You should have black background (#000000) where you have your content, but dark gray. (#222222 is ok, and easy to remember )
• Verdana is the best font to use in websites...

Can you backup your theory of why Vernanda is the best font, and why the background needs to be black? Or just your opinion?

Well, Tahoma and Verdana (which are basically the same but with different amount of letter-spacing) have been designed to be used on computer screens. Generally sans-serif fonts look better because they don't have small squiggly bits on them, which means they can be rendered better by computer screens. The problem with Verdana (and Tahoma) is that so many sites are using them that they can seem a bit plain.

If you are looking for a serif font to use on your website then Georgia and Palatino should be good choices, both are fairly standard and I know at least Georgia has been made for computer screens. It is a good idea to add some extra line-spacing if you are using a serif font though, trust me.