You would like to know how to make a great website that loads quickly and efficiently? Then, here’s the tips that may be of a help. Those tips were developed based on my experiences with browsing various websites using my 36.6k modem and Netscape browser, and working with my own website.

Tip #1. Don’t put too much stuff in one page (especially the main page). Just divide the contents into separate pages (links go to the Links Page, Webrings go to the Webrings page, Awards go to the Award page, blah blah blah.) I know several websites that I never bothered to explore with my 33.6K modem, because they had too much stuff on it, and I don’t have time to waste waiting for the pages to finish loading. Beside, one page with fewer stuff look better than one page overloaded with stuff.

Tip #2. It’s best not to use any large & colorful JPG pictures for background, because they load slowly. The best background is just a solid color (like this solid black background), and, it’s okay to use small and plain GIF tiles for the backgrounds. The animated ones are definitely NO-NO!!! Because they can be very DISTRACTING and annoying to the visitors. I know a website that used animated gif as a background, and that gif is a pain in my eyes. So be wise in choosing a background for you want to make sure that the texts be very easy to read against the selected background. Doesn’t it seem so easy to read these words against this black background? It’s a good idea to use a same GIF tile throughout your website for faster loading even it may bore some visitors.

Tip #3. Be very cautious with using any large images because they load slowly. We have many impatient visitors out there, so it’s better to use the small images. Many of my ‘JA’ images on my website are 16-color GIFs, and you may have noticed that they load quickly. Any very small JPG images (an example size: 50 * 60 pixels) also load quickly too. However, just one large image per a page will work as long as there are not too many other smaller images to congest the loading. Keep that in mind when using the thumbsizes for your fanart/image galleries.

Tip #4. Use the animated GIFs very sparingly or better, don’t use any. Since each animated GIF make up of a number of GIF images (like a movie tape), they have a very bad habit of congesting the loading of a page. Also, they can be distracting to the visitors.

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