Criteria of a good website?

[telsun]

Apparently this http://www.karategoju.com/ is not a very good example of a website, which is quite fitting.

 

As I have it in mind to develop a website or two (eventually, one day) could you guys give some advice as to what makes a good site. Please submit your advice in the following ways:

 

1. Rip the above site to bits, so I know what not to do.

 

2. Give some general advice as to what does make a good site.

 

3. Post links to sites that you think are impressive, with an explanation as to why you think so.

 

4. Anything else.

 

Also if you have your own m/a website for your club or association, how successful has it been?

[monkeygirl]

1: The page is wayyy too long, considering that there isn't even any content at the bottom. Also, one menu bar is enough...there doesn't need to be a horizontal AND a vertical bar. If there's going to be a menu bar on the left, it should probably be in frames just to make matters simpler. When you have frames, you don't have to worry about putting a bunch of code in for the sidebar on every page. Also, the sidebar menu links could be buttons instead of text links, which take up too much room and are hard to read. Small, simple images would be preferable: easier to read and more aesthetically pleasing. Make sure the images are small though, not all of us have cable modems. The sidebar menu needs to be on every page for ease of navigation.

 

2. A good site loads quickly, is pleasing to look at, is well organized, and is unique. I hate pages that are just a background color and big text.

 

Organize your information in an interesting (yet easy-to-read) fashion, utilizing tables and frames.

 

Make a nice, simple color scheme so that everything looks pulled together. Find a nice text size that doesn't look chunky. An image or two is nice, but don't overload your page with GIF animations and huge images. It's disturbing to look at and takes forever to load. If you use a background image, same thing applies: make it a simple repeating pattern, rather than one huge image.

 

NEVER EVER EVER put background music on a page!! If you want music, then allow your viewers the CHOICE of listening to it, i.e. they have to click a link to hear it.

 

Make sure your page has a sense of continuity...don't use different fonts and background colors for every page, unless you really want one or two pages to be very different. If you can learn how to use them, Cascading Style Sheets will be your friend!

 

You'll probably want to hand code the website using HTML and JavaScript. Doing this gives you full control over the loading time and look of the website. Programs like FrontPage add a ton of unnecessary code that bogs down the loading time.

 

3. This is my brother's website that he uses to test out projects and web designs. It's pretty cool...check out the "games" section, he made all of those. Other than that site, I don't really browse around looking for good examples of web design, so I can't really help you out there.

 

4. Good luck!