Web sites can contain lots of things -- animated graphics, image maps, scripting, background images, background music, and colour, colour, colour. But they don't have to. Your site's most important element is text; it should be as concise as possible and sensibly organised via HTML's headings, paragraphs, and lists. Put anything that interferes with your message on the to-be-jettisoned list.

Background colours and bitmaps can make your page pretty, and they often improve on the default grey background that browsers display when a page does not specify a background colour. White or light-coloured text on a black or very dark background can be fairly readable as well, but, for a really radical scheme, consider black text on a white background. It works for books, magazines and newspapers, and it works on the Web too. Don't take my word for it -- check out pcworld.idg.com.au for proof.

Text is your site's main ingredient, but images are the spice that gives the content flavour -- the trick is not to add too much. Even a tiny graphic slows a page's load time, and the longer you make visitors wait, the greater the chance they'll hit the Back button and go elsewhere. As a rule of thumb, keep your pages under 50KB -- some top sites, such as Yahoo's, are even smaller. For help slimming your JPEG images, visit the Online JPEG Wizard at www.jpegwizard.com.