Naming Your Files
'What's in a name?'" Quite a lot, especially when you're staring at a list of twenty of them, trying to figure out which one is the one with your recipe for cake batter. (Was it bat.html, batt.html, or batter.html? Or was it cake.html?) When naming your files, always pick something that will remind YOU of what it contains. Don't worry about whether it will make sense to other people, there's other things you use to describe your page to the cyberpublic.
Titles, What Good Are They?
Why would you want to use a title on your web page? Why do books have titles - to entice you, to tell you something about what's in the book. Hopefully, the titles for your web pages will tell people something about what's on that page. If your page has recipes for cakes you bake, a title like My Cake Recipes would be appropriate. Every page should have a different title, unless it's a continuation of another page. You can think of a title as a descriptive bookmark that tells the user where they are.
Color schemes, how do I choose one?
This is a subject which causes me much consternation. I absolutely HATE it when someone puts white lettering on a yellow background. You can't read it! And worse yet, if you try to print it out, the page is blank! When making your page, consider things like readability and appearance. You might only like pastels, but think about how you could use other colors to contrast those pastels. And if you're going to use colors that won't print well, (i.e., any color other than black) try this. And remember, backgrounds don't print out! White writing on a black background looks cool, but you can't take a hard copy home to momma. You may think this is a cute way to keep people from copying your stuff, but think again. A simple cut and paste exercise will recitify any creative coloring you may have done on your sight. The bottom line is, think pleasing. As cool as Neon orange lettering on a red background may seem, you're not going to get many people who stick around long, and those who do probably won't come back.
Links, a dying breed?
This is another problem people seem to encounter when creating their web page. There are all sorts of cute links that go nowhere on web pages out there. It's frustrating to no end for someone to see a link to something cool, only to get a Page Not Found error. Keep your links updated. If you have too many to keep track of personally, create a little message allowing people to e-mail you and tell you of dead or changed links.
Page Organization
Just as important as picking your color scheme is choosing how you organize your page. A page that is ten screens long is a lot harder to look through than one main page that leads to three sub pages, etc. Even lists of links can get way too long. When you've got more than three screens full of stuff, it may be time to think about starting to reorganize your page.
Straight pages are nice when you want to put one item right after the other, but what about when you want your page to look a little more interesting? Try the second choice on the quickpage editor. You can do all sorts of cool things with it. Later on you'll learn how to do the same thing yourself with tables.
Pictures are nice, and everybody loves looking at them, but remember that not everybody has a T-3 connection to the internet. People still do run on slow modems, like 9600 baud (which is still super fast compared to the real old 300 baud modems.) People running at a slower pace may want to choose to see your family pics, so don't throw 'em all on the home page. More about that in the graphics section.
Cool ideas . . .
Not sure what to put on your page? Go look at somebody else's! There's millions of pages out there, with ten times as many ideas. Snag an idea and make a twist on it, or write your own perspective. Someone got a page on dance, write about your own dance experience! Someone got a page on toys you used to own, tell about your toy collection! For more ideas on web page ideas, check out the Resources section and Web Rings.
Help Me!
Are you totally stuck trying to do something? Take a look at the glossary of terms. If you're trying to do something and don't know how though, it's more than likely you're ready for the nitty-gritty of hypertext. Read on my friend...