So, sxsw - interactive is all wrapped up for 2006. We’re a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and a little more appreciative of 9rules. So, where does this leave us? It’s beginning to feel like right after the holidays, isn’t it? All the big news and events are coming to an close, and people are finally settling down to have a look at their credit card bills for the past while, much to their dismay.

It doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to wait for the next major conference to roll around before you can feel like you’re part of the web community again. In fact, if you’re someone looking to break out into the community this year, your chance is just around the corner.

I’m talking, of course, about the ever wonderful CSS Reboot. Ah! When a young designer’s fancy turns to love!… of CSS layouts.

In all seriousness, thought, the CSS reboot is a fantastic opportunity for every budding designer to strut their stuff in front of the general public. My submitted sites garnered about a 1000% gain in traffic over the weeks immediately following the launch, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.

That being said, here are five pieces of advice I want to offer to the potential rebooter.

1. Don’t design for the sake of submitting; submit for the sake of designing. A lot of people (I’m guilty of this myself) have a tendency to want to enter the reboot without having a clear idea of what to do: They’re already satisfied with their current designs, or they have no new real ideas, they just want to enter it because they’ll feel out of the loop if they don’t. This is the wrong way to go about things: your design will suffer from a lack of creative direction, if it gets completed at all. Best case scenario, and you have a nice design for a site that you created just for the sake of submitting to the reboot, and you neglect it from then on in. The right way to go about entering, rather, is to sit down and evaluate whether your site really needs a reboot at all - there are a lot of ways to excercise your creative muscles, and experimenting with CSS Zen Garden isn’t a bad idea at all.
2. Do you need to redesign? or do you need to realign? Cameron Moll’s article at A List Apart is standard reading for potential rebooters.
3. Sure, you’ll get a bunch of traffic, but make sure it’s the traffic you want. If your reboot comes out looking like a blatant ripoff or entirely uninspired, you’ll have at best wasted your traffic boost, and at worst skewered yourself and blackened your own name in front of the entire community. Along this same note…
4. Make your design your own. While there are trends that are sure to be prevalent throughout this reboot season, just as there have been in seasons past, the best ones are those that set the pace. In other words, make sure your ideas are original, and you’ll get praised for them.
5. Know where to find inspiration, and know when to stop. A major problem with the reboot attracting so many redesigners is that there is a certain quiet-before-the-storm scenario that brings itself to light in the month or so before reboot date: everybody is waiting until launch time, and nobody wants to launch just ahead of time for want of losing out on the reboot. So, familiarize yourself with gallery archives: The best of them can generally be found by hanging around the web developer’s handbook, but make sure you don’t let yourself get carried away: keep point #4 in the back of your mind at all times here, or you will pay for it in the long run.

So, that’s that! Good luck working on your reboots, and feel free to offer up any sneak-peaks in the comments!

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