When you put your name to a site, I would expect it to be somewhat functional. What I wouldn't expect to see is half of the links not working. Ok, so I have had my share of problems, even on this site as far as functionality. For instance, my email system doesn't work; so try to send me feedback and it won't ever email me anything. This is an issue with Godaddy shared hosting though. Find a link on this site listed internal going to an internal link, and I guarantee it will work. So when developing a site keep these basic rules in place.
- Do not have broken links when you are trying to show off your talents and skills. This may cause your audience to automatically write off your reviews or resume.
- Don't have anything that starts music that I didn't ask for. This is abundantly obvious on MySpace (just look around a little).
- Don't put medium gray text on a medium dark/dark gray background. There is a system to determine the spread of colors. Also keep in mind that a pretty good majority of people are color blind, so try to avoid solid reds (especially) and other colors that people might not see.
- A lot of high contrast decorations and anything else that makes your site hard on the eyes are not good things to do.
- Don't put an onclick tag on the body of your page. I don't want a new add every time I try to focus for scrolling or whatever on a site.
I think the most important thing here is to keep in mind that there are many annoying sites out there. There are also many sites out there that aren't so annoying. So try not to make people want to avoid your site. One of my favorites, is http://Experts-Exchange.com where they still inundate paying customers with annoying pop-ups and pop-unders so often that we shouldn't even have to pay.