Avoid Backgrounds that Make Text Difficult to Read
You can't go wrong with black text on a white background. Test any other combination and textured backgrounds for readability of text.

Avoid Flashy Colors and Design
Student might be visiting your pages often and spending a lot of time there, so the colors and design should be inviting, not jarring. Of course, educational web sites tend to be somewhat conservative in color and design.

Avoid the Use of Frames
Frames technology is getting better, but frames still can be problematic: because each frame has a different URL, frames are difficult to bookmark and link; they can make printing the right frame a problem; they reduce screen size for the supposedly important information; they can cause copyright problems when pages produced by others open up in one of your frames; and frames can make it difficult for viewers to leave a site.

Avoid Inconsistent Fonts
Inconsistent fonts make pages difficult to read. Arial and Times New Roman are conventional fonts that work well.

Avoid Heavy Use of Graphics
The web is a graphic environment, and graphics can make your pages look nice. However, graphics increase download time, and too many graphics and graphics that are too big can cause your pages to take a long time to download. Remember that no one viewing your pages at home will have the kind of download speed that we have at the college.

Avoid Large Image Maps
An image map appears at the top of this page. Image maps are clickable images that link viewers to different web pages. A large image map can take a long time to download, and viewers cannot navigate your pages until the image map loads.

Avoid Gratuitous Use of Animation
Because animation is distracting, it should be avoided unless it has a purpose.

Avoid Blink
Blink is also distracting and should be avoided. In fact, it should be banned.

Avoid Scrolling Marquee Text
Scrolling marquee text is hard to read, serves no purpose, and can be distracting.

Avoid Long URLs
The URL is the web address, and whatever you name a file when you save it in FrontPage becomes the URL for that page. Most likely, you will have all of your pages linked somewhere so that people will not have to remember the URLs, but it's best to use short and concise URLs, all in lower case.

Avoid Using Bleeding-Edge Technology
Just because you know how to do something is not a good reason to do it on your web pages, and the more complicated the technology, the more likely something will go wrong. And remember download time.

Avoid Inconsistent Design for Related Pages
Pages that are part of a series should have a similar design.

Avoid Assuming that Your Pages will Look the Same for Everyone
Most likely, they won't. Among other factors, your pages can look different depending on your viewer's web browser, browser version, and screen resolution.

Avoid Long Pages
The longer the page, the longer it will take to download. In addition, a surprisingly high number of web users do not scroll down web pages.