Fringey — Fri, 27 Apr 2001 23:08:09 +0000

I think people pay far too little attention on design on the web just in general. The internet is a widely used medium of information, and just like print and tv, people will recieve it better and respond more if it looks appealing. So yes, i think that you should have a more interesting front page, but the sub-pages need not be as complicated. It looks better if they 'match' though, and yes, of course, loading time should always be the first priority...

Megan — Fri, 27 Apr 2001 14:43:54 +0000

I definitely think it makes sense to spend more time on the front page and other popular entrance routes. The job of the front page is to get people interested in your content. A more interesting design will do that - once they get to the sub-pages, you can assume that they are interested in your content and you shouldn't really need to do much in terms of extra design features to keep their interest (assuming, of course, that your content is of good quality!).

At the same time, though, it is extremely important, IMHO, for the front page to load quickly, so you still need to try to keep those file sizes small.