What not to do:
No spinning and/or flashing animations, they annoy people and make them leave quickly...
No Music! - Really irksome...
No flouorescent backgrounds - bright greens and yellows hurt peoples eyes..
No patriotic flag-waving crap - this is especially prevelant on some US sites, and makes me want to join Hamas..
No red text on a black background - it may be 'metal' or 'satanic' but it's frigging hard to read...
No excessive bevelled edges on things - true, I am guilty of this but it's more 'do as I say, not as I do'

Don't use Angelfire or similar for hosting, as you can't link to pictures on your site..
What to do:
Have some idea what you want to do - you can always add to it or change it later, but starting off with some plan is good..
Get some good image editing software and save your pics as JPG, GIF, or PNG..
Get some site design software, well duh! but seriously, doing sites in Word or whatever is rubbish..
And have fun..
