the whole idea behind MSNTV is user friendliness and simplicity. stick with these concepts. if you provide things like easy navigation and fast-loading pages, you're on the right path. the following are some other things you might want to consider before your great journey....
	THE HOST WITH THE MOST this is the end of an era. the bigtime free webspace providers are wise to our shady ways. they hate us. they hate our broadband connection, our full storages, our ugly websites. Geocities has taken away their FTP, and Tripod now has slashed their storage and spews enormous pop-up ads that neutralizes the impact of any site. kiss remote linking, outside viewing of directories good-bye. those lousy bastards. our only salvation lies at "the zone". sure, it's a pay service and many of us chose webtv 'cause we're so damn poor, but the sixty bucks a year is well worth it. it's totally webtv, it's us. a book could be written on the advantages, just ask any zone user. WHAT IS IT? decide what your page is all about before you begin building. i've seen pages full of unrelated content, starting with the anouncement of a new baby, then ending up showing photos of cars from the 60s! break your subject matter up into several pages. your life may be in disarray, but don't confuse the rest of the world, give 'em a purpose. SKETCH IT i can't emphasize the use of a pencil and paper enough. everything human-made was birthed from a rough sketch. the web is no different. just a tiny bit of planning goes a long way. scripting, saving, viewing, and doing it all over again is very time consuming, we all know that. rough sketches can save you hours. trust me on this one. did you make a sketch of ideas? then go make another one. your first concept is almost never the best. my most valuable advice is: "you can do better", and indeed you can. there is always room for improvement. compete with yourself. by the way, you don't have to adhere to your sketches, but having an idea on paper is much more workable than a vague thought. GENISIS never start with a blank page. all artists know the terror of a staring at a blank canvas. here's an idea: put a large high-impact (low byte, of course) image on your page. most times a single cool thing on a page is all that's needed. plus, it'll have more impact. later, you can use the 'height' and 'width' tags to make it smaller each time you add text and other content. ever dolburn page on the web is under construction. instead of 'under contruction' messages and icons, tell us about your day and why you haven't finished the page because the muse has somehow guided you into making Tollhouse™ cookies instead of HTML scripting. say something. anything? LESS IS ALWAYS MORE (well, except for sex and money). don't get try to get fancy with swirly bits and flashing hoo-haws. keep it simple, stupid. if something's on a page, it should have a reason to be there. it could be as simple as "because I think it's pretty," to "because there's no way around the page without it." If you can't figure out a good reason why something's on your page, remove it. now. LADIES! ok, so you feel that a cute little animated 'strawberry shortcake' gives a mature feminine touch to your page, no matter what i think. by all means, use it, it's your page and you hold all rights to express your individuality. but putting it on a black background is a paradox! nix the black! try white, soft pink or some other pastel. your cute images will maintain their cuteness only on a cute-colored background. to prove that i'm only trying to help, i've used the word 'cute' five times in this paragraph, despite my nausea. PRICE CHECK! wow, look at all the cool stuff in the web for you to gussy up your page! tons of images, animations, backgrounds, banners, irritating dividers. all yours! but they ain't free. in most image search reuslts, the number of bytes of each is listed. that is your download cost on your pages, your cost of storage in your site account. COPYWRONG after many years of heavy lobbying, artists finally won the right to put a copyright on anything they create. then the web came into question, and it was learned that the best way to deal with this growing monster was to ignore it. case after case, it's been ruled that anything on the web is just an idea, unless big bucks are involved. are you really gonna sue a user nic because they are using a code or image you created? crying instead really helps. what if all the bars and gifs you use on your page were copyrighted? to be candid, "..cannot be used without permission" sounds like a dare. putting a copyright icon on a site is pretentious at best, although i gotta admit, a © looks mighty cool. FINALLY.... heck, it's you site. have some fun with it! don't pull out your hair and gnash your teeth over some stupid page. You'll have plenty of time for all that in hell. with page buliding, you have the complete freedom to do whatever you want, which is quite rare in life, so take advantage of it!