Did you read my Top Ten Things to Avoid on Your Star Trek Page? Are you guilty of one or more of them? You fixed the mistakes but the pages still don't look good? Are you planning to create a new page but don't know what to do? Here's some free advice.

Top Ten Things to Improve Your Star Trek Page
by Kasey Chang

With inspiration from
Top Ten Ways To Improve Your Home Page.

10. Set your BGCOLOR to a color that matches your background

You would be surprised at how many pages first come up as YELLOW on WHITE. Doesn't any one realize that their pretty dark background is the LAST thing a browser downloads?

9. Separate your content into multiple pages

You are not charged by number of pages, but by the total size. Putting everything on one page make you look very amateurish, not to mention it takes forever to download.

8. Use proper HTML extensions to speed downloading

Proper use of WIDTH and HEIGHT tags in the bitmaps will allow the browser to display the rest of the page instead of waiting for the picture. Proper use of LOWSRC tags will allow displaying a quick preview of the picture.

7. Don't overload the page with animations

Animations are cute, but if you have more than 2 on a page, you may have too many. Animations slow down the download of the rest of the page. Use LOWSRC to load a static version of the picture first.

6. A Star Trek Page is supposed to look Trek-ish!

A single picture of Enterprise and/or a few Star Trek icons do NOT look very Trek-ish. There are plenty of Star Trek books out there with Trek-ish signage. Borrow them, modify them, and use them. Don't forget to credit where the credit is due.

5. Pick a theme, and stay with it!

What do you expect to see when a page is called "Bashir's Infirmary" or "Quark's Bar"? Probably not Original series pictures. Yet that's exactly what I found out there.

4. Optimize the pictures!

Interlaced GIFs are a must on websites nowadays. Remember to use the Netscape color palette and NEVER dither (dither will increase file size)! Create actual thumbnails instead of using WIDTH and HEIGHT to shrink them.

3. NEVER, ever, borrow other people's pictures without asking them, and ALWAYS credit them on your page.

Information on the net is NOT free unless the owner says they are. NEVER assume. As the villain in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory said, "Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups." And if you f**k up on your homepage, the WHOLE WORLD knows.

2. Learn HTML properly, and validate your HTML code!

I still can't believe how many bad HTML code is out there. Almost every five page I browsed contains an error. There are plenty of HTML validators out there. USE THEM! If you don't know how, you probably shouldn't be creating a homepage.

And the number one thing you can do to improve your Star Trek Page is...

1. Be unique!

Pick a unique name, a unique topic, a unique theme... You have almost 30 years of Star Trek to draw upon! Put up some personal commentary and/or history about Star Trek, or stories that you wrote... What does YOUR Star Trek page offer to the Trek Fandom?

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Also check Top Ten Ways To Tell If You Have A Su**y Home Page as well as Top Ten Things to Avoid on Your Star Trek Page.