It seems like everyone has one. You know what I'm talking about - a website devoted to some aspect of The Phantom of the Opera. But what if you still want to have one, but don't know where to start? Here are a few tips for you.
1. Don't try to dazzle your audience with graphics and neat java things. People want websites with content, not with flashy logos and huge graphics. Believe it or not, but not everyone has a T3 or DSL connection so those things only slow down (and annoy) the slower computers. Concentrate on content - that's the real reason anyone goes to visit a website anyway.
2. Don't make your graphics too big. They take a while to load and often often make the text hard to find. I don't know many people who will willingly sit and wait half an hour for an image to load.
If you want a page that shows all of your pictures, there are a few things you can do. The first is to make thumbnails, letting people click on them to see the 'big' picture. The second is to make a 'slide show'. Have a picture on each page and have people click on 'next' to see the next picture. The third is to just have a description of what all the pictures are, with a link so that if one is interesting, the person can choose to see it.
3. Don't use a busy background. This is the downfall of many pages. The background may look amazing, but put text on it and you can't even read what is written. Stick to plain colours or backgrounds with a VERY muted picture in them. And make sure the text colour is easy to read, there's nothing worse than a webpage where you have to highlight all the text in order to read it.
4. Ask permission for photos or text if you see something you like. Usually, the person would love it if you used their things (provided you link back to their site), but if they come to your webpage and see their images without having been asked, that only makes them very mad. Many of the people on th einternet spent hours making their images 'just so' and to have someone take it and claim it as their own... Well, it's not good.
Setting up a 'Thanks' or 'Disclaimer' page is the best way to thank the people for letting you use their images. You can thank (and give credit to) the people who have let you use things, and the disclaimer says that you are not making any money off the website (use this if you have 'official' pictures from things like souvenir brochures or book covers).
5. Don't send everyone emails and post on every board about your website if all it has is a bunch of links that say 'coming soon.' If you want someone's opinion, tell them privately about the site and ask. If you tell everyone at once, it ruins the surprise and people usually won't come back to a site that is totally under construciton.
6. Probably the most important tip: Do something DIFFERENT. There are a million websites about "Why I love Phantom" or "My favorite Phantom." When I made my first Phantom website, I knew that I didn't want just a normal site. So I created one that was about a character not too many people had even mentioned on theirs - Carlotta. Today, that website has had over 10,000 visitors (more than a few of them have been the actors themselves). All of this because I took something I liked (the character Carlotta) and used it in a way no one else had before.
Find a way to be unique - it will pay off.
These are only a few tips, for more ideas - go surf the web and look at what other people have done. Don't use the same content that they have. Go to some of the more popular websites and see what they have done, style-wise. The most popular websites are the ones with the best design, you won't see many of them with huge pictures on the index that take hours to load!
Good luck!
