Suggestions about website construction

created January 31 2007
last updated Sunday August 19 2007

I've been trying to put up a website for the longest time but really but I've never had the activation energy to get started or continue what little I started. The main problem I'd say was how much mental energy or commitment it took to create a site and maintain it. My solution is the system I customized which makes setting things up so much simpler now that ... I'm actually doing stuff.

Anyway while I've been thinking about the site I've constantly researched best practices for creating a website and I figured I'd put some of them up here. They're not in any particular order really.

None or very little animation.
Make navigation links left to right rather than at the side of the page top to bottom
White background black text.
Create a flowing left to right, top to bottom path for the eye to follow objects on the page.
Links in a particular shade of green
No music
Properly sized picture files.
Bulleted topics and short paragraphs
Large readeable font
KISS (Keep it Simple S*****)

This isn't everything I remember but I'm trying to hold to number 10. The idea is that people can hold a maximum of 7 ideas, concepts, objects in their heads at once and that's really the really smart ones (doesn't include me :( ). The average is actually four to five so anytime things start to pile up in our heads we lose track of things and become disinterested.

It's really the same with making a website really if you confuse people with animations, odd coloring and too many unusual things they may be amazed the first time and come back but after a while when they keep coming back they choose something simpler to interact with for the long term.

Hmm that makes me think how men or women might be drawn to the exotic in terms of relationships (inter-racial dating for example) but then to get married they pick tried and true (only one in 50 marriages is interracial though dating maybe much higher).

Take Google's homepage for example they take KISS completely to heart.

I'll expand on the other points above one day soon.