There's only one thing you must never do, and that's use 'click here' as link text
There are any number of perfectly well reasoned explanations for why you shouldn't (it's to do with the philosophy of linked "hypertexts"), but at the end of the day it's really just a prejudice which has stuck from the early days of the web, and that's that. Use it and you will be the butt of every web designer's jokes. I'm sure you're pretty scared.
Other tips
People are really only interested in content. Yahoo still one of the highest hit sites in the world because easy access to information is regarded as more important than animated gifs of dogs jumping through hoops. Minimalism will at the worse be regarded as average, rather than appalling.
Stealing graphics off other sites results in a site that looks disjointed. The web audience has a very well honed and sophisticated design aesthetic. If you pick up some of the design mags from the union shop these will give you some idea of the level to aim for.
It takes longer to download and people give up reading it. Keep main pages small enough that they don't scroll, and subsequent pages so they only scroll about two screenfulls
These are small, low resolution versions of images linked to the real thing. Most graphics packages
will let you resize images so you can save a small version.
You can link a thumbnail to the real image like this...
<A href="myimage.jpg"><IMG src="myimage_th.jpg"></IMG></A> (1000Kb)
Note that in the above, the thumbnail is labeled with an extra "_tn".
Be aware that some people don't use IE or Firefox, and check your pages on a few screen resolutions and colour ranges - not everyone has the latest in technology, by a long way. Remember that all web sizes are in pixels which means that while that 1000 pixel wide map will fit perfectly on your screen, it could go off the edge of someone else's.
Give alt text in image reference tags, and make sure users can always resize text if they need to by using their browser preferences. It is possible to state font sizes absolutely - but this renders your site inaccessible for those with poor sight. Don't include useful information in sounds without giving a text alternative.
Don't underline text (there is a tag for this) unless it represents a link. Always say in text or icon images (with an alt tag) what you'll get by following a link. It's been found that people find sites easier to navigate if they've got a lot of links on the first page, and you only have to click once or twice to get to information. People give up on sites where there's little information on the first page and you have to keep clicking on large numbers of pages to 'drill-down' to the start of the information they want.
Web design often seems fraught with designing for the lowest possible denominator, the oldest browser, and the widest used html codes (which seem to be revised every week). Don't let designing for reactionaries hold you back, but do make sure your pages 'degrade' as nicely as possible when viewed on browsers other than the latest Firefox or IE. If you do this then you will probably keep your site accessible to everyone. A sound idea is to stick to using the last official html outline rather than the latest one. Most browsers will support the last specifications while few browsers will implement the latest codes completely.
New to the net, and want to get an idea about what is considered good and bad design?
Check out Web pages that suck or the The Yale Web Style Guide.
If you've read through these pages on writing basic web pages sequentially, you now know easily enough to write a competent homepage. Give it a go, storing the page on your web space. If you want some more practise, and made the last exercise page, then try using tables and the School stylesheet to make it look like this.
Go on to learn about some useful sites.