Why did I choose to put together Doug's Website Design Guide?

I have been building websites for over four years now. What started as an extra credit assignment in one of my classes at Mississippi State University has now turned into a full-time job and hobby.

My first web page was horrible. The graphics were ugly and the pages were extremely cluttered. As I began to view other pages on the net, I wanted to know how to take some of the designs found on other sites and apply them to my own work. The first thing I did was to go out and buy a little HTML reference book.

Most of the problems that I find with many websites (personal and commercial) can be resolved with the simplest of solutions. This is why I am going to try to hit on some of the most common web design mistakes, in hopes that I will be able to help you, the designer, avoid these from the beginning.

I am not claiming to know all there is to know about web design. In fact, I consider myself an amateur and will continue to maintain that designation until I can do anything that anyone else can do regarding web design. Will that day ever come? I hope not, because at that point I would have nothing new to learn.

P.S. If you happen to view the source to these pages and notice how clean my code is, it's because I use Notepad for all my HTML work.