HTML what???

One of my little known hobbies is playing with websites. I like to build websites using images and code. :0) I don't do it enough to be super proficient from scratch, but I reference other other sites I've built for the basics and then I can tweak them to suit my purposes.

One of the first websites I ever built was a fan site for the TV show JAG. Here's the first version (snapshot Aug 2002 courtesy of the Wayback Machine) and here's the current version, designed probably a decade ago. Big improvement, eh?

As I mentioned last week, I've begun preparing for publishing my first book. That includes a website for the series I'm working on. It started off as one thing that I wasn't happy with and so I went searching for a design I liked and then began recreating that layout using my HTML/CSSing skills, such as they are. I'm not going to share the site now as it's a work in progress, but I promise I'll share the link when I've got all the bugs in my code ironed out.

What things do you like about websites? Things you hate?