How to build a great website or web page,
without getting picky, or to technical. Remember, get desperate, not on the web? You're dead or dieing... just may not know it yet.
We get a few emails a year wanting to know how we built such a great website. Here's the basics.
You need pictures and informative pages
Map the website before you start with a simple flow of what you want to say and what you want your company or organization communicate. THIS IS VERY,VERY IMPORTANT! Keep updating this map as your develop the pages. There needs to be a map to start. It can be ignored only after you get a few hundred pages built and the main core set up. (We built our site several times in the late 90's because we had no clue where we were going with it.
you have three seconds of stay or leave per visitor, do not waste it on flash, java, pop ups, large pictures or large worded, flowery text. KISS, keep it simple, stupid! Say it clear text, if you can't, then you need to figure out what you're doing or what your trying to do a little better.
If they do not find what they're after, or something that leads them to
what they're after, in three seconds, they leave. Simple, clear pages of information rule!
Lists they leave, short descriptive lists with pictures might help you a
lot, without killing you.
When you start slamming pictures everywhere we've found openoffice to be a wonderful application. *OpenOffice*.org: Home Page <http://www.openoffice.org/>. Just like building a Word or Wordperfect document, but in html.
Pictures need alternate text that makes sense. Pictures without alternate text are a waste. Too many pictures also cause a lot of problems. More that one or two pictures, and you'll have to put them in a table format or they'll float all over the place.
Pictures need to be compressed to about 21% of normal. Picture size needs to be less than 30 k per picture. Again huge picture sizes hurt, you can make pictures that are up to 600X600 pixels and compress them down to 30 or so kilobytes.
Pages need description, title for each page. Each thought on each page needs a header. Best if you can build pages with several flavors of one though per web page.
You'll need pages and pages of INFORMATION, not sales pitch, nor tripe, information. Build one page for every idea you have or want to refer to. Ten pages, HA! Hundred pages might be found, five hundred pages and you'll get into the top 30 listings on Google. Each page reflects about one customer per year for a fair website, 10 per year for a good website. Each one THOUSAND visitors is about one customer. We get about 3-10,000 visitors per day. Thirty visitors per day and you've wasted your time, a thousand a day and you'll start noticing it no matter what the subject is.
Build relevant links within your site. Say you're building a kitchen website, put the pans in one directory, pictures of pans in a picture directory under the pans, make one page for each pan going back to to the pan directory, pan directory. Pan directory needs a small thumnail for each page and a sentence about each pan. pictures (including thumbnail) need to be named for each pan, as specific as possible, with no spaces in name, use _ between words.
No links out unless it's a friend or a GREAT site. do not email me asking for links to a crumby site you built on a Friday afternoon, or paid some hack to build on a Friday afternoon. Good sites take a lot of time and energy and will attract links.
If you're planning on putting a site up, you, the CEO, president or owner have, HAVE to write much, or all of the basic stuff, and map or coordinate the site. A good web designer will badger the hell out of you for content, he/she cannot flavor the site the way you want it, nor knows your business as you do. The more you avoid providing content, the less the site reflects your standards, your customers, or where you want the business to go. A bad website can be worse than no website, as most people see your website as your exposed soul, not your business card. A bad website reflects on YOU the owner or CEO. Put up a suggestion or complaint page and read it at least the first few months before delegating to a lesser, but still import person. That person is controlling your future. Ignoring input is deadly.
Take a notebook with you, write a page a day, revise it until comfortable with it, then set down and write the pages or feed them to your web designer, with pictures.
Check your website for broken links as you build it with Xenu, Klinkstatus or whatever link checker you feel comfortable with. Broken links pique people and they leave or get lost.
Also check the website on a dial up line, checking it on a T1 line is not real. I've had to cold boot my computer before on some sites that had 200 meg. PDF files. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed, nor returned. Simple, information pages written in good html are best. No bells, no whistles, no bull, no direct sales, indirect sales are ok.

Check your website and what you think are your competitors with
www.alexa.com <http://www.alexa.com/>
if in windows also check content with
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/keyex.htm do not fill the page with targeted keywords, fill the page with information about the subject, keywords come from that subject naturally. Use keyword extractor to build your titles and headings, they should reflect your subject. If keyword extractor comes back with mostly words not related to your subject, you'll need to rewrite the page to more target your subject. Information about the subject if more important than ANYTHING else. One page per subject. You cannot reach stardom on the web by asking for links, paying for inclusion, or spending one hour building a website. A good website is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you cannot do that quickly and easily. You can pay overture or Google for ad words once you get something for the public to see and use. Paying for inclusion of a moronic site is really, really stupid, but I've hit many an ad word and gone to a site with nothing there. Cost them fifty cents or so for me to see their stupid mistakes. Spend time making your site full of information and pictures about your subject or product. Expect it to pay you back after a year or so, not a day or so. A year to build, a year to pay back, then it just sets there and makes money or contacts with just a little work.

A few months or so ago, I visited your site and made use of a handy planting guide.  You punched in your zip code and other info about watering and soil type and were provided with a nice list of native plants that might be suitable.  I just visited your site again and can't seem to find it.  Is it no longer available?

www.mynativeplants.com
A figuring out how to navigate our massive site has been a real pain. Google's search has helped. To many pages for a menu(it blew off the screen, even making multilevel popups blew off). Half the people want everything on the front screen, other half complaining that there's too much of front screen.

Hi, sorry to bother you about this, but your website appears on my screen to be extraordinarily wide, making it necessary to scroll across to read each and every line, & then scroll back to the beginning of the next line. 

Are you aware of this?  Is it a problem for others?  Is there a simple way for me to make your page fit on my screen?  I feel illiterate (computer, that is).  I went to AOL help, but cannot find the correct terminology in a search to find an answer.

I'm sorry to ask you for help on this.  If you don't want to answer, just hit reply, but if you're aware of a way to help me resize your website for my screen, I'd truly appreciate the info. 
  Well, you really helped me to 'resolve' my screen width difficulties.  Thank you very much!  I played with the settings & reset my resolution to 1162 x 864.  The screen seems quite large enough, although I was quite shocked to find such very tiny little letters. lol   I played with the display for a while & while I'm still not comfortable with the small fonts, I suppose I'll either adjust or go blind.  At least your whole page is visible & wow, so much content on one screen...amazing!
       Thank you very much for taking the time to help me. 

( I told her how to right click on the screen, go to properties, and change the display settings to at least 1078X768, here screen was set at 640X480. Sell or give someone a computer for the first time set at 640X480 is like dropping off all the major materials and tools to build a boat on a desert island, but no instructions, nails or objects to hold it together. )
About a third of the people looking at the website are cruising with default settings on their monitor.
Someday the developers of pc's will find a simple way to adjust program/screen display settings that will change automatically according to one time criteria set up by the user.