Okay, this is just my pitiful attempt at getting some writing into my update. I am no expert on web pages, or anything like that. So, don't hold this religiously. I'm just saying what works for me, and the biggest things that annoy me.
Okay? This is the disclaimer. If this guide causes your website to suck, or your computer to blow up, it's not my fault, because I warned you. So . . . don't shoot me.
This isn't teaching you how to use HTML. If you want to learn HTML, don't look here. I'd recommend something like HTML Goodies, or The Quick Reference Guide to HTML . . . something like that. Find your own if you want. (Note: These are just links I've found. I've never been to the Quick Reference Guide, and I only use HTML Goodies for its color guide.) This is just my opinion on how one should use their HTML knowledge to construct a page.
Okay! Let's go.
First off: You want colors that are appealing to the eye. You don't want people to clutch their heads in agony, shouting about how the color scheme makes their eyes burn. The best way to prevent a reaction like this is to look at the colors yourself beforehand. And get a few other people to, too. If they're hard to read, then change them. You want something that looks clean, concise. Not messy, ill-thought out.
Be consistent with your colors. You don't want to change colors every few words, even if you're trying to emphasize a point. That's what we have bold, italic, and underline tags for.
Also, make your colors consistent with the mood you want to set. You probably don't want a purple and pink polka-dotted background for the site of a company that sells medical instruments. Likewise, if you're making a site designed for younger children, you probably don't want to bore them with a plain white background and normal, black text.
Colors inside of tables and frames are not excepted from any of these rules. Though they can be different from the site around them, make sure that they don't clash with the site, causing the burning eyes effect mentioned before. Also, make sure the text is readable on the background, again.
Remember: Color is one of the first things that your visitors will notice. Most people will leave and never come back if the color scheme is garish. An attractive and fitting color scheme can work wonders.
One phrase sums up images pretty well: Use sparingly.
Having title banners on every page is okay. Having bullet images, having an entrance image, having a section dedicated to images . . . all of this is fine. But drowning your site in images is just A Bad Thing. It slows down loading time, takes attention away from the site itself, and if you have too many images, it will crash some peoples' computers.
Now, notably, art pages are an exception to this, mainly because their site is to display the images they have made. Even on the opening page, because thumbnails will go a great deal further to explain a picture than a description will. Mainly, because one can at least see partially what the picture looks like, and the style. This is much preferable to having to rely on the artist's word.
However, on informational sites, on sites designed to persuade, fan sites, writing sites, et cetera . . . images are best used very sparingly.
Background images are okay, I guess, but make sure that your text is readable on them, that it doesn't clash too much with anything.
Also, keep images used small, unless they're linked to. Some people don't have monitors as big as yours. Or maybe your monitor is the smallest available size . . . well, then you understand why this rule is in place. If you have to scroll your screen to see an entire image, then that image is too big to be seen on a page, and should be linked to, instead.
Don't use other peoples' pictures without their permission. Especially, don't take other peoples' art and claim it as your own. Also, don't directly link to other peoples' images; this can easily jack up their price of webspace, due to the fact that you're eating their bandwidth.
Also, one more thing: Do not resize images with the image tag. Resize them in a graphics program. Or get someone who has a graphics program to resize it for you. Resizing it in an image tag makes it look really bad, and it also screws up the dimensions a great deal of the time. So . . . I recommend that you don't resize images with the image tag.
Do not add a background music to your web page.
Why? Well, people might be listening to something else. If they are forced to listen to your background music, then they will be very annoyed--and they won't come to your site again.
I recommend, if you must have music, put links to this music, rather than making it automatically play. That way, if people want to hear your music, they can; however, if they don't, they don't have to.
About music you're putting at your website, so people can access it and download it . . . well, I've nothing against that. Do as you will with that.
I recommend a simply layout, preferably without frames, and with few tables. Some browsers can't view frames and tables. (Some browsers also can't view images, so don't center your website around images, either.)
However, no matter what: Do not put your entire website into a table. Even though it may look neat and organized on your computer, not everybody has the same monitor resolution. You can make your website look really screwed up to people with different resolutions if you base your entire website set up in tables. To those with a greater screen resolution, it will look hopelessly squashed against the side; to those with a lesser, it will stretch their screen.
Frames . . . well, except with regards to those with text-only browsers, I have nothing major against having frames. Just make sure you know what you're doing. Making a non-frames version is generally a good rule, I think.
In order to separate sections of your website from one another . . . well, my personal preference is the <HR> tag, which creates a bar that spans the screen . . . like the one separating the sections on this very page.
Also . . . make your layout simple. Simple, simple, simple. And organized. I cannot stress this enough. People who come to your site won't want to have to figure out where everything is, and how to get to it.
And, I don't know if this goes here, but . . . don't disable the right-click. There are several ways to get around it, and it annoys most people so badly that they won't ever return to your site. Just don't do it.
This is what I recommend the bulk of your website be . . . text. It takes little time to load, is easy to make, and, all in all, is very multi-purposeful. Of course, this may just be a personal bias.
Again, art sites are an exception to this.
However, there are certain things you want your text to be, too. For one, you don't want all of your text to be huge. I don't know about anybody else, but to me, that's extremely annoying. One size up, maybe two, is workable, especially so if you're using a small font. Any more than that is an eyesore. As well, you shouldn't make your text overly tiny, either; you need to consider that not everybody can read such small text. Not everybody has perfect vision.
Also, make your text consistent. Make your main body of text one font, size, and color; perhaps headers should be another, and the title yet another. Within these subsections, don't differentiate. It makes things confusing, and overall garish.
Make sure that you're spelling most of your words correctly; people are more likely to take you seriously if you can spell well. Not to mention that some people are so annoyed by constant misspelling that they'll leave your page. Don't go out of your way to sound impressive, though; stay in your league, and the league of your expected audience. (If you don't cater to a specific audience, then just worry about yourself.) You don't want your page to sound forced, unnatural . . . plus, you don't want to make yourself seem foolish by totally screwing up the meanings of words. Stay within a level that is comfortable for you.
I also recommend using words of the language of your audience. Nothing annoys me more than people who insert random words in foreign languages into their writing. If your audience is English, speak English. If it's Japanese, speak Japanese. If it's 1337, speak 1337. Don't mix. And again, don't try to speak above your level; if you don't know a language, don't try to write in it.
Also, choose easy-to-read fonts. And, make sure that these are fonts that most people have. Most of the time, unknown fonts will just default to Times New Roman or Arial, or the like, but sometimes it doesn't work like that, for some reason. So, use common fonts.
All of this I've mentioned . . . none of it is more important than one, simple thing, which is this:
Make sure that you like your site.
It doesn't matter if you get any hits. It doesn't matter if people like your site, agree with your views, or whatever. It doesn't matter if you go against every one of the advisements I've listed. If you don't like your site, then you might as well scrap it. You're the one behind it. If it's a personal site, at least, there's no reason to keep it up if you don't like it. Even if it's a commercial site . . . at least try to make it so you like it. 'Cause, frankly, if you don't like your site, everybody suffers.
Don't let yourself be forced into maintaining a site you hate. Who cares about other people? You're the one that matters, and if you don't like the site, do something with it. Scrap it. Redesign it. Whatever. Okay? Don't stick yourself with a site that's more of a burden than anything else.
With no further ado . . . that is all.
Author's Note
I was sick of Non-Fiction being so empty. I was also sick of visiting sites that were impossible to navigate, and wanted to make me rip my eyes out of my skull because they didn't realize that bright orange and lime green aren't really the best color combination. It took a while to do this, and I thought of all my pet peeves and all of the advice I'd been given . . . and eventually, I came up with this. That's really all there is to it.
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