I'd do it in a heartbeat, if alcohol, herbal medicine and time hadn't caused me to forget everything I learned back in the days.
To all the guys out there who hasn't forgotten how to create a website, please keep some things in mind:
1. MY EYES! White on black is easier to read than black on white, especially on a monitor and especially when reading a lot. That said, don't go bright white on a totally dark background (0/0/0 against a 255/255/255 or w/e the codes are these days). Try a "smoke" text color on a dark brown background for comfortable reading, but anything is better than the standard black text on white background. Even worse is a bright text color on an even brighter background.
The reason is that while reading black text on white paper is great, on a monitor the brightness is higher, and having to block out the background radiance in order to focus on the text causes eyestrain in the long run.
Examples:
Bad. Good. Links are going to malfunction because the site remembers your current layout. So if you normally browse this with the 'http://wow.zam.com' layout, you'll be using the same layout when you click the links. Edit the 'wow' part of the URL to 'www' and 'war' respectively to see the examples.
2. Frame size. The days of 640x480 screen resolutions are over. Don't be afraid to widen up your layout. Watching one of those "optimized" websites on a 24" monitor is just painful, because half your screen is basically just vomiting solid background color in your face while you're reading. Tunnel vision and stuff happens. Without bashing Hyolith's blog too much, it's an example of too much margin on each side.
3. Fonts. Don't go for anything with serifs (Times New Roman, for instance). Go with a font that doesn't include serifs, such as Calibri or Arial. Personal favorite is Calibri because it's not as silly as Comic Sans and not as "serious" as Arial. The reason is that while serifs are great for printed text, it doesn't work well on a monitor.
For those who don't know, "serifs" are the small horizontal lines that Times New Roman, for instance, adds to the 'l', 'n', 'i' etc. It is used heavily in printed material because the serifs create the illusion of lines, but on a monitor the effect is counter-productive.
4. 8-second-rule. Any website is said to have eight seconds to "win over" the reader. It's a sort of average thing, so it's not like everyone will go "eight seconds, I'm out!", but it's a good pointer. Basically, you need to put the interesting stuff on the first page the reader encounters. An easily accessible menu system that the reader can navigate without having to go through dozens of sub-menus, etc. The point is to present everything that might be of interest on the front page, but in a neat way. Don't just toss a million font size 48 links all over the screen, since that makes the site look crappy.
Examples:
Bad. Good. (except for the whole dark text on bright white background - but I used this site because I'm shamelessly advertising)
5. Hyperlinking. While adding a neat image of an arrow and hyperlinking that image into a "back" button might seem snazzy, make sure the reader is aware of the hyperlink. Likewise, hyperlinking images is a bad idea if you do not add a small on-hover description. Believe me, what might seem intuitive to you is not the case with the majority of internet surfers out there. They need to be handheld and carried through the site, otherwise they'll give up before the eight seconds are up.
Anyway, I'm sure you know all this, but considering ZAM didn't, I figured I might as well post it here, in case anyone with some website design skills reads it and decides to have a got at your site. If you have a solid fanbase, the only point you really need to worry about is the first one. It's the most important one, especially with a blog or forum site, because the user is going to read a lot of text, preferably for extended periods of time. Giving your "customer" a migraine in 10 minutes is a bad way to keep them.
That last one is for you ZAM. Get a designer on your www.zam.com layout, 'cause it's horrible. The colors are fancy and all, but it's pure poison for the eyes.
Note: Examples might have been exaggerated for effect. Edited, Sep 28th 2010 12:22am by Mazra