What makes an Attractive Webpaye

[chicago1974]

Dear Friends,

I am trying to build my own website (I am using Microsoft Frontpage). It is basically a website of links pertaining to my favorite hobbies (for instance I want to give a page for guitar links, another page for karate links, another page for travel links etc).

I was wondering if someone can give me the links to websites that are organized and attractive. Moreover, for a website like mine (simply links to websites of my hobbies), what should be the right format to use (font type, font size, color shecme, etc)- is there a website someone can give me to give me some pointers? Finally, I know I need an intro home page. How many paragraphs should I use to tell the reader what my site is about before giving them links to my guitar, travel, karate,etc pages (or do I even need to use an intro).
I would like to design something that appears semi-professional rather than something done by a primary school student!

If anyone out there has done their own personal websites, I would appreciate any advice you can give me.

Thanks and happy holidays.
Dan

[pyro]

I made a personal site (http://www.ryanbrill.com/). The original purpose was somewhat along the lines of CSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/) - to show people what could be accomplished by using valid, semantic markup, with CSS for presentation. While it was still in the works, I decided to add a blog to the site (and thus, was born xBlog (http://www.infinitypages.com/products/xblog.php) [cheap plug - and comming soon, xBlogPro, though perhaps with a new name]).

As you'll see from my site, I went for a simple design. I didn't want it to get overdone, but would like to think it still comes across as professional, well designed, and artistic.

You might also be interested in the sites of these fine designers, in no particular order:

Andy Budd (http://www.andybudd.com/blog/index.php)
Douglas Bowman (http://www.stopdesign.com/)
Dan Cederholm (http://www.simplebits.com/)
Todd Dominey (http://www.whatdoiknow.org/)
Dave Shea (http://www.mezzoblue.com/)