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Which are your biggest turnoffs when you visit a webpage? I have a few pet peeves. Some of them will make me click off a site immediately; others will just make it less likely I'll return; still others aren't deal-breakers, but will affect my estimation of a site's value or message. 1. Auto-playing music or sound effects with no discernable method of turning it off. This goes into category #2 for me -- I won't leave instantly, but I might not return. For a while noisy websites disappeared when MIDI files went out of style, but thanks to Flash (and MySpace) they're back and more annoying than ever. Now, if I'm going to a music, arts or entertainment site, I expect some kind of audio component. But on a business or information site? It's distracting and obnoxious. Give me an option to play music, if I want to; otherwise, keep me in silence, please! 2. Popup ads ahoy! This one's obvious, but... Some free webspace providers go nuts with the popups and interstitials and banners. Banners I can handle, but popups? I can't stand 'em, and I automatically distrust a site that starts taking over my browser with popunders or similar nefarious techniques. Of course I use a popup controller, but sometimes a few sneak by. 3. No "about" page. Call me nosey, but I like to know who I'm dealing with, and what the purpose of the site is, and whom I can contact if I have a problem, and what else you've done, and ... well, you get the idea. Share something about yourself, it's not a state secret! Those are a few things to get us started. What are your pet peeves?

To answer my own question(s): I have several different sites, and with me, the form of contest will differ depending on the site. For example, for my online community, which focuses on writers and creative types, I'd make it a talent-bsaed contest. My own entertainment site would probably instead go with a contest of chance or mild skill, such as a raffle or treasure hunt. Either way the prizes will be small but hopefully enticing enough ... and related to my audiences' interests. As far as contests I've run in the past, here's my history: 1) A posting contest (for my online community), with the prize of a DVD film going to the person posting the most (non-spammy) threads in a 48-hour period; 2) A writing contest at the same community, with the prize of "EpiCash" (our points system, whereby people can buy fun forum features such as arcade access, bigger avatars, blogs, gifts, awards, etc); 3) A character-naming contest (for the online drama in my signature), with the first prize of a $20 gift certificate, not to mention the publicity of having named one of our villains; and 4) A pure chance drawing, where a random audience member of the aforementioned drama won a free copy of my published novel. In each case, the communities and visitors were excited and interested in both the prizes and the process, which is what I hoped for. In future contests I'd like to do actual promotion, though. Anyone else?

I've been pondering the possibility of running a series of contests on a couple of my sites. So here are some questions for people in this thread to discuss: - Have or would you run any contests? - What type(s)? - What prizes, and how to get them? - What if any legal procedures/guidelines did you follow? - How to go about promoting one's contest? - Any success stories or juicy mistakes that we could all learn from? Let's discuss the process of letting your visitors win something for (almost) nothing!

Oh, how I love Dreamweaver and its wonderful world of extensions! Not to mention the incredibly creative and generous people who create them and, in many cases, distribute them for free (or very affordable cost). I'm a complete extension addict, and will try almost anything once. Yaromat, mentioned above, is one of my favorites of the DW extension coders. Of the extensions listed there, my most-often used tools have been the Scrollomat text scroller, Form Field Calculator, and the Layer 2 Style (which scoops up pesky stray inline styles from DIVs and places them in the STYLE tag where they belong). And they're all free. Massimo Foti has dozens of useful extensions, including the brilliant Snippets. Four Level is a commercial extension firm, with lovely DHTML menus, galleries, scrollers and other productivity tools. I have their MiniMenu set of extensions, and love the simplicity and styles they all produce. Above all, my favorite is Project Seven, a design company specializing in Dreamweaver. Their product line includes gorgeous (and accessible!) CSS page templates, image galleries, menu/navigation extensions, and too many utilities to name. Extensions I love best are Tab Bar Magic and Pop Menu Magic, each of which creates expandable, multilevel menus; Geewiz Scrollers, an elegant solution to many of my scrolling/gallery needs; and Image Gallery Magic, which (as it sounds) is a flexible, easy image display tool. Their free extensions are vital parts of my DW program, especially: Floating Frame (inline frames), Null Links, ShowPic, AniMagic layer animator, CSS Cookie Monster, Class Changer, Object Color Changer, and especially the AutoLayers/AutoHide combo. Please keep 'em coming, I love finding new toys to play with in DW!

Well, I suppose anything is possible. Personally I don't think it's likely that a regular income could be derived from the sort of promotion one can do without any financial investment whatsoever. That goes for online or offline businesses. Those are great places to start. If "pretty cheap" is on the menu as well, don't forget that there are several opportunities available for offline promotion, which I think many of us forget. Running off a hundred fliers at a Kinko's or off your own printer costs little enough. Depending on your website's purpose, you might consider which if any local stores or organizations might be persuaded to place a flier in their window. Some supermarkets have bulletin boards -- physical ones, that is, not the web kind! -- where you can place info of interest to the community. Be sure to check with the manager for permission, though. Also, for less than 20 US$ you can get a t-shirt, bumper sticker or coffee mug with your URL on it from places like CafePress or even local t-shirt shops.

I agree completely. I've gained so much in my years as a community member on dozens of boards and as an administrator/moderator of a few! The exposure one can get to different points of view from people of vastly different experience and personalities is simply invaluable. And of course there's the capability of self-promotion (when done in accordance with the rules and guidelines of each community, of course). For those interested in starting communities of their own, some great resources included the Admin Zone and Admin Fusion. There are also software-specific communities such as vbulletin webmaster, although those are usually more technically-oriented. What other resources or experiences do people have regarding forums? I guess we could expand this to include other types of communities (such as LiveJournal-based sites).

What does everyone think of press releases in announcing a website or broadening one's audience? In my experience, press releases can indeed be valuable -- targetted to the proper media outlet(s) and written with an eye to what the outlets themselves will find of value to their audience. IOW, you want your release to seem like genuine news. Some of the mistakes many seem to make with press releases are: a) they're too often focused on obvious promotion of nothing more than a website or product, rather than something that could be of actual worth to a news organization. As proud webmasters, we all think our nice new website is of intrinsic value, but unless it's something truly remarkable -- perhaps it fills an underpopulated niche, offers exclusive content by experts in the field, or takes technology to a new level -- few news organizations or even trade publications will see fit to do more than offer a plain link, if that. they're written unprofessionally. Whether it's dull, lifeless text, an incorrectly formatted layout, or bad grammar/spelling, a badly constructed press release will be consigned to the circular file very quickly. c) they're aimed too broadly. If you have a site focused on your local eateries, sending twelve well-written, focused releases to your region/community's newspapers, online portals, restaurant guides and magazines will do far more than 1000 generic press releases to outlets including PC Weekly and U.S. News & World Report. Well, those are my thoughts anyway! Anyone wanna share some war stories of using press releases successfully (or unsuccessfully -- we can all learn from mistakes!) in the past?

My clients tend to fall into a couple of different niches, but by and large they're all in the publishing industry. Which shouldn't surprise me, as I'm a writer, except for the fact that with all but one client, I work solely as a designer. I'm pretty much an artsy person, and my contacts tend to be in the literary/theater/music/entertainment worlds. Geographically, I have folks here in New York as well as in Canada, California and the UK. So no, I don't restrict to my neighbors. Although it'd be interesting to see how many in my apartment building have or need websites... (Alas, the building doesn't have a bulletin board for advertising services. ) Interesting question! I'll be curious to see what others have to say.

Yeah, collecting from clients can be a tricky one for a freelancer! I agree with Kris in that obtaining some deposit is vital. Sometimes it's a good idea to split a job into several 'phases' (with certain percentages of the funds becoming due at the commencement of each phase). The most important part is: get everything in writing! Even on small jobs ... heck, even with friends ... setting up a proper contract upfront will help solidify the commitment on both sides. It's not always possible, especially for really really small jobs. When it comes to taking on piddly assignments without contract, I only do stuff that I wouldn't detest doing for free. Y'know, work that's either fun, challenging or educational. This way if I am stiffed, I won't beat myself up over it.

I use IE 6 and Firefox, primarily, though I test in Opera as well. Unfortunately, after upgrading to the latest version of Firefox, my computer's been crashing indiscriminately. Which stinks, because there are some extensions I'd really like to try. (I think I'm one of the last FF-users to start tweaking it!)

Ugh, this sounds like the fall of civilization as we know it! Well, okay, I exaggerate. But I'm a writer and content developer, not to mention someone who actually cares what she reads on the Web. So when I see one of these "auto-generated content" sites, it makes my eyes roll so far back in my head I can see the chair seat behind me. They're so obviously faked, so cynically designed to suck in people (and search engines) to fool 'em into clicking those precious Google or YPN ads. I'm not against folks earning money off their sites, but it's a real pity that the web has become filled with utterly useless, meaningless drivel that does no one except the site owner any real good. And worse, it makes the quality stuff harder and harder to find. But more power to ya in finding something good.

Whoops I believe he meant SourceForge.net, the open source respository and work center where coders collaborate in projects to develop products and scripts. They both host and document these projects, although some also have their own separate websites. If you're looking for a simple feedback form, TheSiteWizard has an online generator/wizard you can use. It has lots of cool features, such as creating all the scripts you need for easy cutting/pasting, spam protection, bandwidth protection, form field validation (i.e. it checks for blank or incomplete fields before sending), Perl or PHP versions, and even though it's free, it has no ads nagging at you. Hope this helps!

I was wondering what graphics and HTML software programs other web developers use when creating their sites? My own toolbox must-haves/basics include: Graphics: Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks, Serif's DrawPlus, Adobe Photoshop and Micrografx Picture Publisher. Of the above, I'll bet most people are unfamiliar with DrawPlus and Picture Publisher. They're both inexpensive and somewhat outdated programs, but they're the software I've used for years and I still find myself going back to utilize their familiar, helpful tools. DrawPlus specializes in vector graphics; Picture Publisher (which I think is now called iGrafx?) is bitmap only. Of course Fireworks does both vector and bitmap, so it's the best of both worlds. It also does a great job integrating with Dreamweaver, which is the HTML editor I use most often. And speaking of which... HTML/Coding: Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver, MS Frontpage, JGSoft's EditPadLite. Dreamweaver's been my favorite HTML editor for many years now, and with each new version it improves its capabilities manifold. What I love about it is the seamless way you can go from easy WYSIWYG layout editing to hands-on source code work. The extensions provided by the Dreamweaver community let the program do everything but jump through hoops for you. I also love that unlike Frontpage, Dreamweaver is pretty darn strict about adding unnecessary tags and code to your source. Frontpage isn't my "go-to" program by any means, but with one client I don't have a choice: his site was developed with FP and now can't be updated (not even FTP works) with anything but FP. One of the many charming proprietary features Microsoft specializes in. (And no, I'm not an MS-basher; I rather like many of its programs. But Frontpage drives me nuts the way it takes over a website!) On the plus side, sometimes it's useful to be able to edit the pages directly on the website. On the downside, sometimes it's dangerous to edit pages directly on a website! Woe be unto you if you make an erroneous change on the server but don't have an original backup on your harddrive somewhere. Finally, when dealing with scripting or quick code refining, a solid, no-nonsense text editor is what you wanna go with. Notepad'll do in a pinch, but it's often too simple and can mess up code at times. That's why I love EditPadLite, a free program that offers tons of features useful to a hand-coder, such as accurate source line numbers, a robust Search/Replace, tabbed files, and pristine code retention. I use some other products, such as Flash and other animation programs, but these are definitely the tools I work with most often. What about everyone else?

I usually go two different routes. First, and most commonly, I'll open up my graphics program of choice (Fireworks, Photoshop, or sometimes my ancient ol' Picture Publisher by Micrographx) and stare at a blank canvas for a while before beginning to draw. I play around with color, shape, text, and gradually the hazy inspiration begins to form into something solid. My other method is to go to the drawing board, literally: take out my pen and paper and begin to sketch. Both these methods are accompanied by comments in a notebook, where I map down the navigation hierarchy to remind myself of pages I'll need to include. Also, URLs of related sites for either linking or inspirational purposes. (Of course, some of this depends on whether I'm developing the site on my own, or whether I'm working with a client. My notes and sketches tend to be much more detailed when a client's involved -- always good to have something in writing to refer to when discussing stuff with others.)

Wow, thanks to Eskymo for that collection of very helpful links. I'm already a big fan of Project Seven and A List Apart, but some of the others were brand new to me. Thanks for offering the code for us to swipe, too!

What a lovely site, Eskymo! The deep honeyed brown is so warm and inviting, and the faded scrollwork background adds a great deal of depth. Love the 3D effects with the photos and key in the briefcase (or suitcase?). And it has a historic feel without seeming ancient or stuffy. An excellent start, and I look forward to seeing it develop! Congrats and best of luck to you.

I use 1024 x 768, since I find that a higher resolution is a bit hard on my eyes. I tend to sit a bit too far away from the monitor, and this way I don't have to squint too much. Drives me nuts when designers don't develop sites with "average" resolutions in mind. Those huge wide layouts are blatant giveaways that they haven't tested the site in different resolution environments. And horizontal scrollbars are of the devil! 800x600 seems to be dying out, although it's still seen in something like 20% (at least of my user base). One fifth is still a significant amount of traffic, so I try to make my sites flexible enough to degrade smoothly. Great poll idea!

Hi everyone. My name's Kira, and I'm a writer and web designer here in New York City. I started out creating basic designs on AOL using an ancient WYSIWYG program "AOLpress," way back in 1996 or so. To my surprise, the second iteration of my website (the webseries/drama mentioned in my sig) won Yahoo!'s "Cool Site of the Day" in June 1998, and I guess that inspired me to look further into web development as a career. I made the leap in 1999 and have been working as a freelancer ever since. Anyway, I'm always looking to refine my skills, especially in the coding and technical sides of the development arena. I've only learned techie stuff by bits and snatches, learning on my own by doing rather than taking classes or tutorials. I know I should take courses, but life's a bit too busy at the moment. So far I've been able to accomplish all I've needed to -- and when things my clients need are beyond my scope, I acknowledge that and outsource the job! That's another reason I like to join web development communities like this one; they're great for finding other developers who might have the skills I need, and vice versa. Thanks to Ben for starting a helpful new community!