Planning your own web is a very personal process. You will have your own
ideas about what to make available on the WWW. And the Web is a place
that fosters creativity. Let a thousand flowers grow! Why be constrained
by anyone else's rules?
That said, allow me to offer some suggestions based on my own
predilections and observations:
Think through what you want your web to accomplish. Is it just for
the amusement and amazement of your friends? Is it primarily for your
own convenience? Is it primarily to interest new people in things that
interest you? How will you balance your priorities?
A simple, well-planned, and economically laid-out page is
usually preferable to a junky, overdone, or rambling page.
Does your material lend itself more to a discursive approach (like
this page) or to an outlined approach (like the main page in this web)?
As a general rule, do not manipulate your HTML to create a look on a
particular browser. Remember that people with Lynx will be looking at
your page.
A web looks more professional if you establish a style for it and
maintain the style throughout the web. For example, all of the pages in
this Home Page Workshop web end in the same way. The IOSCS web is a good, simple
example.
It's helpful if you can provide a link from each page to the beginning
page of your web. This is not always possible, as when you create links
to pages in other webs or in gophers.
If you add pictures,try to make them a size that will fit on an
ordinary screen. At a resolution of 72 dots per inch, an ordinary screen
will hold a picture 8.5 inches wide and 6 inches tall. A more
conservative approach is to size pictures to fit in the default window
size of Netscape and Mosaic: 6 inches wide and 5 inches tall.
Remember this the World Wide Web. Do not put anything on
your web that you do not want the whole wide world to see.
Your ideas about what to put on your web will probably evolve as you
become more familiar with the Web. There is a kind of dialectic between
what you can do and what you want to do. Six months from now you'll
probably want to redo some things that you do today. Changing the
content of a page is easy, but people get used to accessing a
particular URL and so changing URLs is trickier.
The WWW folks at Cern offer some suggestions for planning the Structure
of a web.
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