Having read all the comments here, I thought maybe I had been a little harsh or that perhaps those that said things don't matter were right. I asked my mother's opinion which I did by opening the main page and asking her to browse through. My mother has no idea about rules of web design and had no idea who's site it was. It has further convinced me that contary to what many people have said here, certain things are important even with personal pages. I'm not saying "rules" can't be broken or people should not be themselves but if in doubt, I would certainly get some basics right.

Here is some of what happened:

From home, she clicked on the band page, and exclaimed "O my god, this is horrible" when she saw the black/orange split background.

She then went back and went to the first art page which produced another yelp as she discovered yet another color scheme.

Next visit was the second art page where she said "do I really have to wait for this to load", I asked "what would you normally do" and she said "go back". In fairness, the fastest connection speed of 28.8k here but a subsequent inspection of the page revealed that the images (which I happen to think are superb) are far to large for the display size - much faster download times could easily be achieved without altering the appearence of the page.

I then asked my mother to navigate using the links rather than the back button. The comments I recieved were along the lines of "this is a jumble/ this is a mess".

Finally, I asked her whether she would have visited the whole site and she said "no, I'd have left after the 3rd page".

I do acknowledge this was just one visitor but it may well be relevant that this person was not visiting as a friend of Morticia's.

Please do not get me wrong, I am not trying to bash Morticia (I am in fact pleased that she is giving it a go and wish the site well) but to try to illustrate the fact that people like me do pass comments in an attempt to be constructive and to help make the site more attractive to others.

You'll never please everyone but a few simple steps, even with personal pages can help to widen the number of people who will stop by and give the site a proper look when surfing through.

Jon