My site design philosophy emphasizes content and then function over form. Fancy graphics load slower and don't really add to the page content. Graphic buttons don't actually work any better than text buttons but take longer to load. Loud colors often conflict with the content. Loud or complex backgrounds actually detract from the readability of a page.
Animated graphics do little to enhance the content and take time to load.
I hear enough background music in elevators, it doesn't need to be placed on web sites. I use perhaps 25 different HTML tags in the whole site. Each page looks much like the others as I create new pages by copying old ones and I change only the content. For a sample of all of the HTML that you'll need to write a web page from scratch, see simple HTML instructions . An official reference document defining HTML 3.2 can be found at The W3C HTML 3.2 Reference Specification .