Colors can make or break a web site

Have you ever had the experience of going to a web site only to suddenly feel like you have entered a psychedelic nightmare from the 1960's? Oh, the wonderful pink background with bright green characters!

You can really mess up a great web site with some bad choices in coloring. An example of something that I see all the time is below.

Isn't that awful? Yet it is very common in web sites. I guess some designers think it is artistic. They are wrong - it is merely an excuse for their visitors to hit that back key fast.

You want to be careful with color. Use it wisely. Pick font colors that sharply contrast with the background. For example, block characters on a white background or vice versa is great. White or yellow on red is also good.