Need advice on my first website

[sandman357]

Hi,
I am a newbie and just built and published my first official website. It is an e-portfolio and I am going to use it to find another job. Before I offer it to potential employers would anyone mind checking it out and offer me any advice you have?
I am specifically interested in knowing if I am violating any rules by linking to other websites.
Thanks!

[Brett_Tabke]

First, welcome to webmasterworld.

As you summised, we just can't do site reviews as we'd get spammed off the net in a heartbeat.

The only thing I will ad, is that people generally do not care for text over patterened background - they hit the backbutton in a hurry. Other than that - nice job on the first one. ... now get to work on the second one now that you know what you are doing ;-)

[sandman357]

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry about asking for a review.

Is it ok to have links on my site to someone else’s site, or do I need permission from that site first?
Thanks.

[bumpaw]

Sandman I believe most people are happy when you give a link to their site.

[goldengob]

Yeah, as Bumpaw rightfully said; Most people are happy that you place them on your site. What you might wanna do though is try and get a link back in return to benefit yourself. I'm pretty new myself, but I found 8/10 Webmasters will trade links with you if you are polite about how you do it.
Just send them a short email saying that you found their site interesting, and wondered if they would like to do a link exchange. You may be surprised at how many you will get. Being relatively new, most of my traffic comes from links.

[shigamoto]

As the previous post suggested linking is a great way to attract traffic to your site. Of course you have to find sites that are about your size and are related in some way.

As for site reviews there are several Usenet discussion groups dealing with that kind of stuff.. They are not always very nice but it get's the job done.