A good vanity page needs a lot of mediocre clip art. At the top center of the page you usually find drawings and animation stolen from copyrighted material. Seldom does the Web page have a picture of the person. If you insist on being tasteful, keep it sentimental. Pooh bears or a baby blue background with light pink hearts, for example, will work.
Clouds are also popular.
No good vanity page exists without a lot of poems that stink to high heaven. This is usually done after you show a few friends how to make their own vanity page and you link to theirs. They, in turn, link to yours. Advanced users might link to a Kahlil Gibran site, a cat site, or a Beanie Babies site. All vanity sites have a mail-to link symbolized by an animated mail icon of some sort.