Lets all share our design do’s and don’ts :P

I’ll start off with
Do: validate your sites code and always make sure your site is browser compatible
Don’t s: Don’t add background music, that’s a given though, especially if it can’t be trned off or if it starts on page load. Dont forget you image alt tags! :)

Share yours!

Hey girl! Glad to see you made it.

Do:
Use external stylesheets for your web designs when you can rather than an internal one in your sites source code
setup a smart, functional navigation system so users don’t get confused

Don’t:
please never use fully flash based sites *shudders*
dont use a splash page with a graphic or somehting and an enter site link, it’s very bad for seo.

lol hey Moni *hugs*

question, which is better, right or left navigation?

It depends, for a blog I always tell people to stick to the right hand nav setup, on sites its natural for a user to look to the left for a nav menu.

Now if we’re talking SEO, a well thought out navigation menu with strong keywords to the left can be helpful, unless you want to give more weight to your content, in that case keep the menu to the right. See a Bot crawls your site from top to bottom, first the header, then left side of the content area , center/main part then right column if it’s a three column template, and finally the footer.

So again, it depends on what you have in mind, site blog? you get what i mean babe?

You rock!
Ok so for a website, a well structured nav to the left would be fine right? what do you mean by keywords in the nav menu though? like as headers and stuff?

That’s right yes, left side well structured menu works fine.
Keyword rich anchor text, so instead of an About Us link for info about your company (say a Diaper website lol) you can use “Diaper 101”, instead of a link with Products as anchor text use something along the lines of, “Diaper Products”, and also make sure your navigation is consistent, try to link to every page on your site from the menu on your main page, every page that has decent content on it of course.

in short: do make good websites
      don’t make bad ones…

That about sums it up. heh

I would think with a professional site as your own, you’d be at least able to come up with a helpful constructive post for this thread IFOH :)

Moni, I was being facetious, but to give my 2 cents:

Do:
Include a “selected state” for your navigation

Don’t:
Use a tag cloud

I know you were, it was funny too, just adding something constructive from your pro point of view to give those interested tips is always a plus in my books!! :)