Above all else, your site must look professional. That is, it should be neatly laid out, easy to read and navigate, not have broken links, and spell checked thoroughly. On this last point, get some-one else to read it all as you will have become too familiar with it by the time you are ready to launch it.
As tempting as it might be to include all the latest functionality, not everyone will be able to see it, or even appreciate it. Skip the flash intros please, and no sound either. As annoying as it might be to design around 1024×800 screen resolution, there are still a lot of people using it.
Just what you use to create the site is a matter of personal preference. A quick informal survey of other gambling webmasters showed Dreamweaver and text editors as the most popular. A combination of both is best and for a text editor I use NoteTab Light which is packed with functionality and free. This shouldn’t be confused with Notepad which comes with Windows. Check out the Affiliate Resources page for more information.
That’s about as far as I will delve into this subject because there are many other sites and books on this subject. Suffice to say, look around at lots of sites, (not just the gambling ones) see what you like ad depending on your skills, go from there. Be sure to seek out other people’s opinions during your testing phase.