State your goal

What's the overall goal of your site? State it clearly, and avoid bland and meaningless generalisations

Alt attribute
The Alt tag is an attribute of the <img src tag. When visitors to your site have chosen the "graphics off" option in their browsers, the <img src tag has an "ALT" attribute to provide alternative text if the image isn't loaded. For example, if the image is of James Joyce, the HTML would read something on the lines of

Besides being useful to people who, for time reasons, prefer to surf with graphics turned off, it's also a quick, neat way of conveying info to surfers who are blind.

<Blink>

If you want to be really annoying, a <blink> tag </blink> will do it. Nore more to say about that.

Backgrounds

As stated before, be careful if you choose to add a background image.

Compatibility

You are catering for an average web user so try not to use browser specific tags and plug-ins. Having said that you can create great web sites with things such as Javascript, Java, Shockwave, ActiveX and cookies. Adjust and test your pages till you think they are perfect and bug-free. Test-drive your pages on

• different browsers (e.g. on both Netscape and Internet Explorer);
• different versions of each browser;
• different machines;
• a slow to medium-speed (eg 14.4 kbps) modem rather than the very fastest one in the shop or office;
• different "test drivers" or guinea pigs such as your friends.

Feedback

Your pages should always have some contact info. Phone and fax numbers should be there but are not enough. You should have a clickable link to your email address:

Gimmicks and Dynamic pages.

If possible you should have some interactivity at your site instead of just plain static pages. Some examples are forums, chat rooms, and message boards.

Gimmicks such as counters and cookies which say " Michael Smith, you have been to this site 25 times" are good. However awards for the best web site are no longer imperssive.
Using server side includes can make your web pages dynamic, showing current date, time, give a greeting depending on time of day, display user's IP address, hide and show content conditionally etc. At Celticweb we use Netcloak which allows you to add all sorts of dynamic tags to your pages.

Icons

Don't use navigational icons without accompanying text. Use Alt attributes here.

Italics

Try to avoid using italics when unitalicised text follows it (in some browsers, the space between the two sets of words can get lost). Or add extra space - type the six characters &nbsp;

Be concise

Get to the point. Surfers don't like to spend too much time either reading or downloading the contents of web sites.

Links

Pages of hundreds of links to other sites are annoying. Keep links to a minimum. Each link should be very self explanatory. Paragraphs of text with every other word linking to some other page are advised against. It may be wise to order all links in a visible navigational structure.

Images

Keep images small and don't clutter up pages with loads of images. Again download time important. Use WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes as pages will load faster. Once again, use the Alt attribute.

Planning

Try to plan your site by being consistant. Use a template and macros if possible. A macro is a file that perhaps can contain a navigation bar. This file can be called in all your pages giving them all the same look. And when you make a change in your macro file, the change takes effect instantly in all your pages.

Spellings

Spellcheck and then check your spelling. While you are at it, check your grammar, then check your spelling once again.

Under construction

Really try to avoid "Under construction" statements and icons.

Updates

Try to add new relevent material to your site occasionally.

Window size

Don't make users have to resize windows and scroll down to read and read and read. Pages that scroll endlessly across to the left are a definite no!