"The Most Important" Web Style Rule

I think the most important web style rule is to logically organize one's site. Individuals seeking something on the web are called users (as opposed to readers) and, in order for a site to be successful, it has to be usable. With the wealth of material available on the web, users have a choice in where to find what they are looking for. Unless a site is easy to use, visitors will give up and move on to the next site.
The issues surrounding organization, or lack of organization, of websites are interesting. Since the web is such a (seemingly) different mode of communication than the traditional written word, I think people often forget that websites need to be as organized as other modes of communication. In their online web style guide, Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton write the following: "Although networked interactive hypermedia documents pose novel challenges to information designers, most of the guidance needed to design, create, assemble, edit, and organize multiple forms of media does not differ radically from current practice in print media." The idea for web style in this passage is to distribute information in a logical way even in a non-linear medium. The difference in structure in the creation of web media should not temp people to put whatever they want on the web without consideration of the way it can be understood by the user. Lynch and Horton warn: "Don't get so lost in the novelty of web pages that basic standards of editorial and graphic design are tossed aside." The web is much newer than our other methods to create and communicate with other people, but the tried and true rules it took so long to establish in those other methods is still viable for the web. Of those established rules, organization is the most important there as well.
When I revised my English 328 website, I attempted to logically organize what I had already done. My first website was the equivalent of me blurting out anything over the web because I was just learning how to put a website online. I did not organize at all. For the second website, I was required to include all of my work for the class, so I could not simply throw all of that material on a site and hope a visitor could make sense of it. I organized it with a first page linking to another page which links to all of my projects separately. This organization scheme is not linear like a book, but one item follows another in a logical order. My new site is highly usable for anyone visiting it because I adhered to the web style rule I believe is most important.