DOS' AND DON'TS'

Oh yes, the classic does' and don'ts', of website creating and management. Just had to be here somewhere, didn't it, hehe. So anyways here's my personal list of does' and (bigtime) don'ts'!

THE DOES'

Some people thinks its cool to show off all the (ugly) backgrounds their host provides them with, but trust me one this one, it's not! It's anyoing, confuseing and incredibly fustrating.

Same goes for fonts, people.. Its stressing if it changes all of the time, and it hurts the eyes.

Not that big a suprise, huh? Beening original is really importent, if you care about getting visitors, not to mention keeping the coming. If you're not, why should they care to visit YOUR website, and not one of the maney other unorignial websites out there (oh, there's plenty out there).

Visitors finds websites with lots of interactive stuff so much more fun, and they stay longer on the site. Therfore it's very important, that you don't just have the reads and the free stuff.

By that I'm not talking about music, and other illegal thingies, no, I'm talking about things such as fonts, freeware programs, and free layouts.

Not too long, and not too short. If either occur, the site can get really confuseing, and it gets really hard to find whatever you're looking for, eg. If you have all links listed together, the visitor will have to look through everything. However, if you have 13 navigation points, it will end up taking too much time just to read the navigation itself, and it'll also seem like you actually have it all listed right there.

One of the things that sucks most, is people who never(or almost never) updates! A good idea is to update atleast once a week. If you're going to be away for a while, or if your at bording school, where you can't update (like I've been), let people know that you won't be updating that often. And remember to have a place on your site (I recomand the frontpage) were you write the new stuff..

Isn't it just lovely to jump into a page, with an beuatiful layout? It is indeed! It's difficult and often time demanding, to create a good layout. It requires a lot of pracitce, and don't make the same old, same old excuse, that you dont have some expensive graphic program - you're fully capable of making a neat layout, with paint alone, and if that isn't enough for you, there's plenty of good graphic programs that's free, eg. Pixia, which you can download here.

The Don'ts'

A lot of people claim that shifting randomly betwen normal and capital letters, is very fustrating for the reader, and I must admit, I 100% agree with them.. Use it in MSN/AIM conversaions ect. all you want, but keep it away from your website. To alot of people it's really anoying, and harder to read, and most likely including maney of the people, who are gonna visit your website. So unless your gonna have a "doN't eNter weBsitE, iF yoU miNd mE WriTing lIke thiS" sign on the frontpage, just keep it off your website.

Some people find it neat, that the sites they visit have radios, but I hate, hate, HATE it!, and I know I'm far from the only one. It's sooooo unbelievablely anoying, and shouldn't be allowed at all. Especially when you can't stop it, because of lack of stop functions, or because some "no right clicks" script prevents you from rightclicking to stop the disturbing noice.

Don't have too little content, it gives the visitors the feeling, that they've been wasting their time. Also, do not have more content in "webmaster" and "stuff" menuens, than the "interactive" menu. Don't have a 1000 things in one navigation, and almost nothing in the other (no, don't move it, make some more content, in the menu that needs it).. Here is a way to help you to balance it out:
[x= number of pages in me navigation
y= number of pages in you navigation
z= number of pages in site navigation]
Y=X*3 (pages)
Z=¾ of X(pages)
Z > 3


You enter this beuatiful website, it has the most amazing layout, a great set up, and is full of entertaining content. Every visitors dream right? Now imagine this wonderful little dream, getting completely spoiled, by an ocean of typos -typoes, that could have been prevented, if only the webmaster, had bothered to look through the material, just on freaking time. Of course there's always gonna be a few typos here and there. But you can pervent about 90% of all your typoes, by just reading through the material once!

Sometimes your visitors needs to get in contact with you, in other ways than your guestbook.. It can be for private messages, or because they need to send you a pictures, also there can be something rong with your guestbook. And when you don't own an email, they can't contact you..they simply can't. That can get really fustrating for your visitors, and you don't know.. Btw, I'll sugest you get an seperat email for your website. You should probably also create a page under the "webmaster" navigation, called contact, where you list it in.

By wrong colors,I mean something like a really pink font, and screaming lightgreen background ect. It makes it really hard to read the content, and it's very painfull for the eyes. Good nice colors, that fits together, makes a much more attractive website.

Directlinking sucks for both webmasters involved. For the webmaster that gets directlinked from, it sucks because it ruins their site, and because that the directlinked image, is something they've made for their website only. For the webmaster that steals/directlinks, it sucks because at some point, the real owner (the webmaster of the site they directlinked it from) removes it, and the thiefs image just turns into a read X! And that's hardly desirable.

This is probably not a trend for people with english as their native language, but maney people, whos native language is something else, tends to use english words now and then, even thought the rest of their website is in a completely different language, and it's really annoying. Often it's the navigation, where one or several links are in english. For crying out loud, stick to one language!

Personally I hate it, when people use a wrong font size. A wrong font size can either be a font is huge, it gets really difficult to read the material. And the exact same thing goes, if the font is way too small. So therefore go with a size 1 or 2 (if you use css that would like a 7,5-8,5 pt/10-12px).

"Basic" things..

Its allways good to be original, but be carefull with being too original ;) Some things are just pretty much "must haves" for websites (unless of couse it's not a "normal" personal website). Please keep in mind, that you don't have to call the navigations, what I've called them, it's just so you know what navigations I'm talking about.

Basic info
Contact
Awards(you don't have to have resived any when you make it.. )

Hpage reviews
Get it(presuming that you give out awards or something like it)
Polls
Htlm codes
Some kind of downloads(wallpapers, layouts, graphic, font ect.)

Links/affiliates
Link the site
Credits(don't bite the hand that feeds!)

A blog for updates
Navigation
A nice setup with a good overview
A guestbook