1. The biggest mistake probably most of us have made. Before you start a site, plan out what contents your going to have first.

2. Get a zipdisk, CD, or whatever to organize the stuff you will use for your website. Make one disk/cd for images/etc., and maybe just a floppy disk for the HTML your using for your site. (IMPORTANT. EVERYDAY A SPONSOR DELETES A SITE WITHOUT NOTICE, SO YOU SHOULD HAVE BACKUP FILES JUST SO YOU WON'T HAVE TO START OVER FROM SCRATCH.)*isn't this ironic since all my new stuff was deleted in the server move? Luckily I saved my files*

3. Try to start out with only a few sections, (I suggest six at most, if you have a lot of free time) and make sure to complete as much of the section(s) as possible for the beginning of the site. (if it's a fansection, try to get friends, people from chats or message boards, or your own fanstuff before even starting to work on it. If you can't get any fanstuff, then you can just open the section saying you need submissions.)

4. Don't worry if you have only a few sections, it better to have a small amount of good content, than a large amount of crap. Trust me, I always worry about it, but many people prefer the good stuff.

5. Once you completed the sections as much as possible, its time to choose a layout. It really nice to have a color theme, but be open to all options, because your layout might not turn out nicely in your favorite colors. I strongly recommend you get colors that complement each other, and most important, try to make your layout as simple as possible. Don't put images as a background because it's too distracting and noisy. (I can definitely relate to this, purple is not my favorite color, the layout just turned out like this because I made my colors complement with the pattern I chose)

6. Now you can go webspace shopping. It's best to go and buy some webspace from a sponsor if you don't want a domain. If you want free webspace, I am going to go ahead and say that Xoom, 50megs, and Angelfire are not exactly the best sponsors for you. I recommend getting homepages.com, I have heard less complaints there, and I never heard of their sponsors deleting their sites. I put homestead and geocities as a secondary source; I have an account there (homestead), but the only problem is you can only upload things one at a time, and trying to organize stuff there is annoying. (I used to use 50megs for this site, and the idiots here are using up too much of their bandwidth, not only that, but they deleted some of my stuff and messed up parts of my site and html. They probably did the same with other 50meg sites as well.)

7. Once you uploaded all your contents, and HTML, go to each part of your site and check for glitches or errors. Yes, I know it's tiring and annoying, I don't do it at times. But your visitors will hate it more than you will when there is a error on a part of your page. (I follow this suggestion now, and I found sooo many mistakes in my page. I was so glad I checked it)

8. Your site is ready for the public! The best search engine to submit your site to is Yahoo!, and Google. Submit to many search engines as possible for better results. It might take a few weeks before your site appears on the search results, and it most likely will not be on the first page. Exchanging links with other sites really helps, and making your site stand out a little brings a great benefit.

Extra Tips:

Make your site at least 80% original (meaning that it's YOUR own stuff)-Many surfers rather go to a site with different content, then a pirate site with the exact same stuff.

Using Flash may not be a good idea-Lately this is becoming a bit of a problem. Many sites are going overboard with Flash. I have a lot of other friends who agree with me that those kind of sites are frustrating. It takes forever to load, and some sites make their own original controls. BIG MISTAKE. Some controls are hard to figure out, or just get in the way. If you do use flash, keep it simple. Look at my frames layout for example, its kept simple, and it could easily be done the same way with Javascript. No confusing controls or gigantic confusing layout. The only reason the layout and the intro take forever to load is because 50megs's bandwidth is mostly used up. Not everyone is able to look at flash pages as well. If you need to have a flash page, then go ahead and make a non-flash page.

Being fancy is being too much-Similar to the flash problem. The new cursors are ok, but try to get simple small ones. I see huge multiple pictures or gifs used for cursors and they just get on my nerves because I can't always see what I am clicking on. Embedded music when visitors go to a page is also something that gets on many people's nerves. Make sure the visitor is able to turn off the sound on your page if you have to have embedded music. Don't put "vote for me" pop up Javascript messages because it just makes the page take forever to load and it's annoying when you have to vote for a site before you actually know if it's worth voting for or not.

Limit the frames-Basically what the tip says. Limit the number of frames. At most there should be only two frames. If you need more for your layout (like me) then make sure to space each frame so that the visitor can look at the page comfortably. (I shouldn't be talking :/) Many surfers have browsers that can't support frames, so put a no frames tag on your page.

Make sure you page is suitable for all modems-A biggie here, lately I have been trying to make my page load faster so all modems will be able to work with it. Sometimes it means just to take off a bit of fanciness to something for it to load faster. (That is exactly what I did) I have a 56k modem that runs like a 14.4k because of my I.S.P. In ways I can benefit from the speed because I can look at my page and check if it takes too long to load on the slowest modem. Many people still have 14.4k, and if you make a page where even they don't have to wait too long, you have a better chance of getting many new frequent visitors. ^_^

No right click. Is that really necessary?-Is it? When ever I go to a page not all the images load sometimes and there are a few red x's. What I usually do instead of having to refresh the whole page again, I simply right click and click "show picture". Or if I can't really understand how something is made in html or I wanna know how something was done in html or javascript, I right click. I also use the rightclick to open links in a new window while another page is loading. Many page owners put no right click commands on their page because they don't want surfers to steal their content or copy their HTML. Do they realize that people can still find a way to look at their source? You will always have a risk of your stuff being stolen no matter what. If you're so cautious about your content being stolen, put an icon or url or something on your images. Make sure the visitors know that this is your stuff, and you don't want anyone taking it without your permission. Some people even give warnings that if they see something of theirs in a section taken without permission, they will close that section. And, for extra safety go to www.kamiccolo.cjb.net. This guy will have your site watched.