Maintaining a B/S (or any, for that matter) site

    In the past several years, after visiting countless sites and running this one by myself, there are a lot of things I've learned about what I should have and what I should not have on my site.

    Now, even though you may think this has nothing to do with fan fiction, I say it does. Many authors have their own site to house all of their fan fiction. And because of that, they start learning HTML and graphics and wind up creating an actual 'shipper site, not just their personal archive. I completely encourage this, but often see the same things over and over again that drive visitors away and make the navigation very difficult.

My intention with these tips are just to give some pointers on what to NOT have or TO have on your site.

1. Do NOT have music playing!

    Personally, this is my most important rule, which is why it's first. All right, I know a lot of beginner sites have music playing (the craze several years ago was to have MIDI playing all the time nonstop). You personally might enjoy it, but overall...people don't. It's a distraction (especially on a fan fiction site when you're trying to read) and is annoying if it's blasting out of your speakers. If you DO have music playing, have it optional, don't have it start up right away. Not only is it annoying, but can slow down the loading time of your pages and drive visitors away.

2. Do NoT WrItE LiKe ThIs.

    WeiRd WrItInG aNd TeXt SiZeS aRe ReAlLy AnNoYiNg....can you tell? Personally, it hurts my eyes to even try and look at that and attempt reading it. Have normal text in the standard fashion...use normal fonts (no Wingdings here, people!), and use correct punctuation and grammar, and your visitors will love you for it!

3. No clashing colors

    You want your site to be appealing to your visitor's eye. Have colors that will compliment each other, not clash. Also, on your pages that have long pages of text (like your story pages, for example) make sure you have colors that will go together and not hurt your reader's eye. Something like this or something like this is NOT good; it's definitely too drastic.

4. Don't crowd your pages

    Sometimes, I find it hard to navigate through a web site because I can't understand where or what the navigation is and where I should be looking. Crowding your pages, placing tons of photos and text everyone can look either tacky or jumbled, and turn visitors away from your site. Also, it slows down the loading time for people. Keep it simple and elegant and your site will be great!

5. BIG no-no to plagiarism!

    "It's just a site," you tell yourself. Or, "It's only a web graphic and when am I ever going to see this person in real life?" No. Plagiarism, stealing or copying something from someone else and taking credit for it is illegal...even on the internet. Stealing layouts, graphics, HTML code, you name, it is WRONG and very looked down upon. Even if this is just the internet and we can't do anything legally against this, if you plagiarize on your site A) that's just sad and B) you're going to have one ticked off webmaster at you.

6. Have things that will keep your visitor there

    When I say this, I am mostly thinking of the page transitions that some sites have...where when you click a link, it does some fancy zipping and sliding across the screen to go into the next page. In my opinion, that takes time and no one wants to sit around and wait for that to transition. Usually, those are unnecessary add-ons to the site that slow loading time and might turn visitors away.

7. Make sure your color scheme goes well

    Especially if it's your fan fiction site, you want to make sure you have a background color and text color that will match and not strain people's eyes. Basically, like not having clashing colors, it's a good idea to have colors that are pleasing to the eyes for reading page after page of a great story!

This is about all I can think of for now, and I feel that these are the most important rules you need to know to run a basic fan fiction site to house your stories. If you can think of any tips you'd like to see here, just e-mail me!