First things first
Decide what you want. Plan. Decide how your site will be set up, and what you want it to be. Make a flowchart. If you have no idea how to do a flowchart, at least sit down and draw a map of how you want things organized. Think of your site as a living thing. If you've been working on it for a while already, try to avoid thinking of it as an evil time-eating monster. Reorganize it if necessary - I've had to do that a few times, and I promise it will save you time in the long run. Get it organized right, and it will have room to grow gracefully.
Make up a look and feel for your site, do you want it to be professional, romantic, elegant? Do you want it bouncy and cute (for kids, perhaps)? Talk to a few people who spend some time online, find out what they like and dislike. Spend some time yourself online, and take note of the pages on your favorite sites. What do these sites have in common (no, I don't want to hear " pornography ", unless you are designing an adult site) that you enjoy? What don't you like on a site? Make note of both, then put those things that are attractive in your site.
If you are running an art or music site, keep the high bandwidth stuff for the back pages, after you have the person hooked. If you have a very graphic intensive first page, they may run off to a site that loads faster. Give them the choice on what to load - give them links to music samples, make your art into thumbnails they can click to see a big picture.
If you need to run programs and scripts on your site, make them server-side (run on your site) rather than client side (run on your viewer's computer). Programs and scripts of any sort will slow down page loading to some extent, but at least if they are running on your server, they are much less likely to cause your customer's browser, or computer, to crash. If your site crashes them, they will not come back again. Note that most web providers hate this advice, because it uses their server more. Too bad - that's what you pay them for!
Javascript can be fun, but everyone who uses it for important things is losing the large WebTV contingent, as well as anyone who turns Java off for security purposes. Image maps are pretty, but if you do not have text links as well, you may lose many who are not on fast lines. Not everyone has a top of the line processor or a cable connection. There are still people, even in the year 2000, who are browsing around on old machines. Many people don't upgrade, not because they can't afford it, but because they like what they are accustomed to.
I started out with all of my tips on just one page but things got a bit out of hand. I should pay more attention to that first paragraph, on planning! The how-to site page has now been divided into many subjects. I also have put up links on each page to sites I have found useful when learning the subject. The one thing I think is very important is to look at your site in various browsers (and turn off your graphics and see what it looks like without them too!).
A Choice of Browsers
I'm sure you can find the latest Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. These are some of the other browsers that are available.
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- Hot Java
- Sun Solaris' Browser - runs on multiple platforms. The one to run if you like sites with extensive Java programs. If a site blows up on this browser, the site has bad programs, and you can tell them so. Free.
- Lynx
- Lynx is a text-only browser for the World Wide Web. Lynx 2.8.2 runs on several platforms. Free.
- Neo Planet
- A jazzed up MSIE, essentially - more for fun than other reason.
- NCSA Mosaic
- The browser that started it all! See how things used to look in the 'old days'. Free
- Netscape Navigator
- archived older versions (good for testing pages, or if you have an older slower computer). Free
- Opera
- Best on on the market for making things look the way you, the user, want them to look! You can override almost anything. Not free, but reasonable.
- Lynx-It
- See what your web page looks like in Lynx! Type in your URL online, and it will show you what your web page looks like in a text-only browser. I'd advise you to use this - it's very educational!