101 Dos And Don'ts Of Website Building

There are many aspects to consider when building your own website. The following is a list of 101 common issues.

Page Design

• Use a contrasting colour scheme. Be careful not to alienate those with colour perception difficulties

• Keep each page under 40K in size, people will not wait for your web site to load, they will go to your competitors

• Keep images to a minimum, not everyone uses software that displays them. This is more important than ever now with the multitude of mobile devices available.

• Validate your work. If you write clean code, it will work on all platforms. Use www.w3c.org or any of the other free validators.

• Do not use images larger than 544 pixel width. It will be sliced on WebTV.

• Do not use proprietary tags, not everyone uses the same web browser as you.

• Avoid Flash, Java and JavaScript introductions. Not everyone has them installed.

• Use CSS to keep your page file size smaller. Ideally, use it so that people can disable it to view a "printer friendly" page.

• Structure the layout so the page makes sense.

• Use san-serif fonts. like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana and Tahoma etc. It will make the text easier to read at smaller browser settings.

• If you use pixel width instead of percentages for your page, ensure you do not exceed the 544 allowable for WebTV, there is no horizontal scroll on WebTV.

• Avoid using page counters, they are inaccurate and misleading. Do you really want your competitors to know how well your site is doing?

• Avoid using too many effects on your pages, think minimalist - less is more.

• Avoid using frames, it is safe to assume your visitors know how to scroll the page up and down. 

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