I think I'll elaborate on good web site design patterns. Today's sites must be dynamic and use CSS and a database driven content management system. That way, when adding content (chapters or stories, or (gasp) authors) there is no need to create a directory tree and index html files and all that paraphernalia - one should be able to do all that automatically with a few mouse clicks and info pasted into form fields. The data would be automatically parsed to clean up the horrible Office generated formatting, linked to a single style sheet definition file and validated for cross-browser compatibility (something you don't get with Micro$oft tools). Then all entries would be fed to the database and stored there (possibly including even the large textual data itself, so it could be easily updated, searched, compressed, etc.). Cross-referenced indexes (by author, story, latest update, etc.) would be automatically generated, so as soon as the data was entered it would be updated everywhere (in neat formatting), making tiresome repetitive maintenance (prone to human-factor related bugs) obsolete. The system would also allow vital statistics be gathered (and displayed using flash-based graphics!) and email updated be sent, all without any human supervision. The administration's day to day task would be reduced by an order of magnitude. The data would be displayed based on templates and style sheet information. No changes would be necessary on the backend to alter: font, color, background, and layout of every page on site, instantaneously. All that is required for such a redesign is tweaking of a single CSS file, or, provided the content management system is "smart" enough - the same, but in WYSIWYG mode. If you've wondered - the file would also contain paths to the graphics, so that too is easily changed globally. Even better, using smart client side scripting and caching the monthly traffic could be reduced (by half) by re-rendering indexes on the client side and making the textual data much smaller by intelligently compacting the (x)html. The savings in traffic and labor could greatly surpass the costs generated by the overhead created by the extra features (web application API, keyword and parameter searches, statistics (popularity, updates, word count), per-user customizations (bookmarks, favorites, reading list, email notification...), rdf syndicating, etc.), though you have to take the increase in hosting cost into account. Speaking of costs - the one time starting investment could also be prohibitive - developing such a system will not be cheap, and it does require real enterprise level hosting solutions (web server, DB server..), so for a site that cannot be a dot-com - it's a real problem, especially because few of the management or regular users of a Harry Potter Fan Fiction devoted site would be able to do some of the technical work themselves... I sure wouldn't want to develop that on ASP and VBScript though! *Sigh* </nerd>