Well I have been looking at websites all week looking for some new content and let me just say I am dissapointed.

So I have decided I am going to add a new section to the site about the do's and don'ts of website design .

Along with tutorials and links to some awesome tools.

Hopefully some of the horrible sites I have encountered will take a look and make some changes.

If I have to look at more more site with flashing stars in the background or with the brightest neon colored fonts my head will explode.

However for now here is my top 10 list of don'ts

THE DOS AND DON'TS OF WEB DESIGN - PART 1

There are many good and bad things you can do in web design; the following is a list of some of those options and how you should deal with them.

1. No page counters: Page counters do nothing except make you look like an amateur, mess with your design and tell people information about your site you probably don’t want them to know!

If you want to know how many people are hitting your site, just ask your host for server stats. Any host worth it’s salt should be able to provide you with detailed stats that make page counters look stupid.

2. Forget blinking or flashing text: The only place you see blinking and or flashing text is on the neon signs of naked bars or web sites made in the mid 90s! People don’t like them and expect to see naked people inside sites or buildings that have them … enough said.

3. Make your titles on your web page make sense: One of the core attributes of a web page is its title. In between the <title> </title> tags you can specify the page's title as it appears in the browsers top title bar and in the search engine results.

People pay attention to page titles, so you should make sure that they are clear. If you have a page on how to take care of dogs and you happen to have a dog named ‘Jimmy’ don’t title your page: ‘How to look after Jimmy and his furry friends.’ You should title you page something like: ‘How to take care of dogs.’

4. Don’t force people to download a new browser or special plug-in to see your site: Unless you have a site that people are dying to see, why limit your audience because you want to use some special features in a browser or a plug-in like Flash. Today, with proper use of CSS and HTML you can present fantastic looking pages without having to jump through the hoops old timers like me had to when garbage browsers like Netscape 4 were being used in great numbers.

5. Think twice before using framesets: In the olden days you could argue a use for framesets because of HTML’s lousy layout capabilities. Today with CSS positioning being well supported by all the major browsers there is no need to use framesets for just about 99.9% of websites. Why don’t you want to use framesets you ask? Well beginners tend to have trouble creating and using them properly. Framesets tend to make websites more complicated than they need to be and finally they can cause you all kinds of problems with the search engines.

6. Don’t try any stupid cheat tricks in an attempt to fool the search engines: In the past we webmasters developed various nefarious (disreputable) methods in an attempt to get higher rankings in the search engines. Tactics included putting hundreds of key words on the pages as invisible text etc … These tactics may have had some limited success in the past, but those days are long gone. Try to fool Google (the king of search engines) and you and your web site will die a horrible and painful death! I will not describe how to get high rankings now, but keep this is mind: good content honestly presented is the foundation of high rankings and high traffic for your site.

7. Chat rooms: Most people don’t give a crap about chat rooms. And worse than having a chat room is an empty chat room! Who wants to hang out at a club that has nobody inside? So unless you have a web site with tens of thousands of visitors a month and is of a subject that might necessitate a chat room, don't do it.

8. Flash intros: I am guilty of this as much as the next guy. A few years back Flash intros where all the rage, not sure if anyone knew why we ‘needed’ them, but as it turns out the ‘skip intro’ button is the 2nd most clicked on the web today. Don’t waste your time on Flash intros and in my opinion Flash should be only used in special situations.

9. Under construction pages: Just forget it, if the page is not ready, don’t put it up. If you have links that are pointing to the pages, disable them until your page is ready. If your page is truly ‘under construction’ and has content on it that is ready to be seen by your web surfers, just post a ‘last updated’ date and make sure you get the new content in place soon. What ever you do, don’t put one of those cheesy ‘under construction’ images on the page.

10.  Don't use background music on your web pages!

Some web designers like the idea of a little background music to set the mood of the page. In special cases like say an MTV or Disney website, this can work. But for most websites this is just a bad idea for a two reasons:

1. Music files are typically pretty ‘heavy', and take time to download. Most surfers will not think that it's worth the wait. Besides, many computers simply don't have sound capability, so it seems silly to force these people to download something they can't use.
2. Unexpected music/sound spewing forth from ones PC can be very annoying and potentially cause problems.

If you want to have music on your web site, make it an option that the user can turn on and off. A good way to do this is with a Flash movie; most browsers come equipped with the Flash plug-in and the Flash supports compact MP3 files.

Of course, if you just want to give users the option to hear some piece of music, like your bands latest tune, or a sound clip from an interview, the easiest solution is to create an MP3 of the audio, and then create a link to it.

I have been floating all over the internet today and have stumbled upon tons of sites claiming to teach you how to be wiccan. Some even charge for this service.

Well guess what (i know I am gonna piss some people off with this statement ) but here goes.

Being wiccan is a path you choose not a set path that someone shows you.Yes you can be guided in what direction to go but nobody can write you out a map to get there.

This being said my only advice or guidance I can offer to anyone who is in need of guidance is read,read and oh ya read some more. And once you have read so much you feel like you know all you can read some more, you can never be educated enough.

There are some people out there who will tell you there way is the only way and will stick to that. I personally call that being close minded .

This site began as a place for me to store all my collected info, never in my wildest dreams did i think I would have gathered so many awesome people together to learn with and I hope we can all teach and help each other along our paths.

Blessed Be