Designing a new page
Sounds obvious? But it's easy to get carried away with our enthausiasm and end up with a very busy page that isn't easy to read.
Start with a piece of paper
Planning a basic structure on paper will help sort out your thoughts.
Don't spend time on fonts, colours, etc until you've finished writing the page, tempting as it is, leave it until you've completed the text. It is much more efficient and importantly you'll get a better result. A general rule of thumb for typography is just 3 fonts per page - ie 3 sizes (heading, sub heading and paragraph - with some bold or italics for emphasis).
Check your work before publishing
When you've finished the page, just before hitting "publish", ask someone else to read it through. It seems trivial but publishers go to the expense of paying individuals to proof read text written by journalists to avoid printing errors - it really is that important. Ask a colleague, friend or family member to read your material, because even the smallest error will glare at someone looking at the page for the first time.
Your reader
Remember your reader. They may not know as much as you about a subject, so make sure you spell out an abbreviation the first time it's used, don't use too many technical terms, try to include maps and full addresses for events.
Equally important is to be brief, because if it looks long, it will end up on the "I'll read that when I've got a minute" pile, and who goes back to read a page later? If the material is long by necessity, make plenty of use of succinct subheadings to help readers get the gist before reading the detail.
Pictures
Pictures paint a thousand words, well, at least a hundred on a website, as they can certainly illustrate the mood of the day.
If you are planning to write a report on an event try to ensure you have plenty of pictures to choose from, plan ahead to find some one else to share the responsibility of making a photographic history of the day. It sounds obvious, but when you are in the midst of the event - acting as MC, working on the BBQ, selling tickets... basically busy "delivering" the event it is easy to forget (or simply not have time) to use your camera.
We are used to seeing pictures at least 12cm wide in magazines, newspapers, family snaps and on our computer slide shows, but when they are reproduced on a web page they will probably be just 4-5cm wide, so when taking pictures for your website remember to keep the composition simple and concise. If you want to clearly show a big team consider photographing them in groups: refreshments team, committee, and so on. To reproduce a huge picture you will either have a big image on screen (and if your reader is using dial-up it will seem like forever as it downloads) or people will be so indistinct that only their families will be able to identify them, worst of all it may be fuzzy.
Finally, when including images you should bear in mind the sensitivity of including photographs of the vulnerable - especially children.
