>>... I am leaning towards The Auburn College Republicans Web site theme and look....<<
I think there's some poetic justice in that the Republican Party's mascot is the same as 'Bama's.
Auburn's gotta hate that.
Roll Tide!
1) When using javascript, also provide an alternative for those that do not enable scripting. Otherwise, visitors cannot surf your site properly.
2) Avoid cluttering interactive pages. Simplicity is key to the user's interaction (see google.com)
3) Avoid posting email address as
foo@bar.com as that will lead to enormous spam
4) Avoid navigation only through javascript menus (again, non scripted interaction would otherwise not work)
5) Avoid images that are excessive in size. It is a bandwidth killer and generally does not provide additional benefit.
6) Clearly state a terms of use page.
7) Keep track of robots that autoindex your site. It is your information and you should be able to control it. For example, cyveilance.com's spider is particularly nasty in that it ignores robots.txt and pounds your system.
8) Get and use a good weblog analyzer to track traffic, and find errors.
9) Try to provide users with latest information up front. Nothing worse than having to reread the same crap that you read yesterday, just trying to find what is new.
10) Keep reading freerepublic, and get your friends to participate.
Good Luck