When building a website, there are several items you need to remember. The first, and perhaps the most important is graphics! Graphics are great. Everyone loves visiting a site that is beautiful to look at. However, many people have a tendancy to overdue the graphics. Choosing your graphics is a very selective process.

There are many places online where you can find free graphics for personal use. Be sure to read their Policy & Terms of Use before downloading and using the graphics. Many sites that offer free graphics restrict their usage and ask that you provide a link back to their site. This is simply common courtesy. Often you can include a special "Links" page just for this purpose. Some artists want the link provided on the page the graphic is used. So, you need to be sure to read their policy carefully before placing the graphic on your site. Last, but probably the most important thing about using graphics found on the internet........ALWAYS DOWNLOAD THE GRAPHICS TO YOUR COMPUTER.........NEVER LINK TO A GRAPHIC ON SOMEONE ELSE'S SITE! Doing this takes up bandwidth and is reprehensible. Have some courtesy!

There are a few important things to remember about placing graphics on your website. One of these things is size! You may have a lightning fast cable or T1 connection to the internet, but it is imperative to remember that many, many users do not. Most users have a 56K or slower connection. Large, intrusive graphics slow down the page loading time, and more often than not, your visitors will simply leave your page before your conent has even finished loading! People are impatient and personally I give a page about 30 seconds max to load, before I hit the back button and search elsewhere. So, it's very important to remember that the slower your page load time, the fewer visitors your site will keep.

Another important thing to remember about graphics is that graphics are intended to illustrate. No one likes waiting an eternity for a page to load, only to discover that half the graphics they were waiting for have absolutely nothing to do with the site content. Remember to keep your graphics to a minimum and be sure they directly relate to the content of your site or serve a purpose within your site. If they don't, get rid of them!

Another important design technique is color schemes! I cannot stress this enough. It is really annoying to visit a site where each new page is an exploration in rainbows! Choose a set of colors and be sure to stick with that same color scheme throughout your entire site. This site, for example, uses the same background colors, font colors and graphics within my color scheme throughout every page. It's much more pleasing to your guests. You can think of your website as your home. Each new page of your site is like a room in your house. In most homes, each room is not decorated exactly the same, but the same basic colors are used throughout the whole house. Why? Because it makes your guest more comfortable. That is the whole purpose of your web site, isn't it? To invite people into your site and hope they feel welcome enough to sit back, relax and browse your content.

Content! Here's an important thing it remember. Always try to keep your content on target. Before you begin building your site, sit down and decide what exactly you want your site to say. Only provide content to your visitors that is relevant to those goals. Don't wander from the main intent of your site. For example, if you have a site about rock collecting, people who visit your site expect to find relevant information about rock collecting........not, say, the latest downloadable patch for games. Keep your site oriented.

This site, for example, began as a means to publicize my Ebay auctions. However, I also decided to include other links of relevance to discount shopping on the internet and since some of my Ebay auctions deal with crafts and quilting materials and computers, I also decided to include some informative editorials on these topics. It all ties together.

One of the biggest mistake people can make when building a site is an overuse of java! Java is great. It has a lot of functionality and can really add a flare to your site, when it is used correctly. However, it also slows down your page load times. If you want to use a small java applet to advertise a particular advertisement or to bring special attention to a particular bit of content, great. You can use java for some very nice, user-friendly navigation options. However, do not use java just because it's cool. It's highly annoying! You have to think to yourself, "Is this really an important part of my site?" If it's not, get rid of it.

Probably the absolute most irritating, frustrating and overall annoying thing you can put on your site is music! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER place music on your site. If music is necessary for your site, allow the user to decide by placing a clickable link for it. Music takes an eternity to load, which will cause many of your guests to leave. Another thing about music......Going back to the "your site is your home" analogy, not everyone likes the same music you like. When you have guests in your home, don't you try to play music your guests like? And if you don't know what they like, you don't play any music at all, right? Well, the same goes for your website. You have absolutely no idea who your visitors are going to be, so it's best just not to annoy them and don't play any music!

Of course, navigation is also important on your website. There are many ways for visitors to get around your site. But, there is nothing more frustrating than getting lost on a site and not being able to find your way back out. Basically, every page of your site should have some form of navigation to get to the other pages. This can be accomplished with a site map, any of a number of navigation bars and with frames. In the simplest form, if you're not using frames, each page should at least have a text link to the other relevant areas of your site. Also, on the topic of navigation, when you have links to pages other than your own, you should target those links to open in a separate window. That way, vistors can review the information in the link and still get back into your site, where they left off, relatively easily.

There are many things to remember about building your first web site. It would be impossible to cover them all in this one editorial. However, I hope I have given you some things to think about. Web site creation is an art and true art is never just thrown together. You have to plan it out very carefully so that your masterpiece can be enjoyed by everyone!

For more information regarding basic web authoring, check out Basic HTML Rules!

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