Aloha! Please chime in with what you have found to be the best tips for mission-making. So far, these seem to be fairly good guidelines ...

Things to stay away from while constructing a mission:

Flash-based pages will not show the pop-up
Facebook (the way that FB parses addresses does not jibe with PMOG)
Any type of secured page, any page that requires a log-in https: or a subscription to read or view info. You may be logged in when you added that lightpost--and it breaks for all those players without accounts.
Pages with tons of frames--most Geocities pages will break.
Really, really old pages
The PMOG page: PMOG.com just routes to a player's game events feed, so you are adding a redundant page to the mission. People know where the info lives, you don't need to remind them.
Wikipedia pages containing symbols such as: ? % | & : And any other oddities. Many of the Wiki addresses can be changed to suit PMOG's addressing needs--just remove the symbols, refresh and see if it works. If it does, set a lightpost.
Example:
/wiki/Your_Fave%282002_movie%29
can very easily become:
/wiki/Your_Fave(2002_movie) Success!
Any address with those 'funny' symbols--Portals don't accept them either.

Things to Think About:

Many of the larger sites redirect for country-specific pages; Yahoo, eBay, the big game sites--Xbox, Sony, etc., if you can link directly to the country specific page, please do so! It make those who take your mission outside of your home country happier.

How about using portals for any pages that don't load when YOU take the mission the first time? Any Flash heavy page is a perfect home for the end of a Portal.

Use some Portals!! By using Portals you can include most of the pages that might 'break' the mission if they were used at lightposts. This way you can use all the pages and include all the info that you would like to, without 'breaking' the mission if someone doesn't have a Facebook page, a log-in to the site, or the wherewithal to decode the sidebar and find the next site(That has happened twice to me--the coded sidebar.) But note, Portals don't accept % in the address either.

Teh interwebz are NOT static creations!
Links to pages may change, the info may move, the site may disappear, etc. and then your mission will break.
This has happened to quite a few missions so far--I've had to update 6 of my own missions to make sure that they still work and look good.
If you like your mission and want people to take it, learn something and then leave nice comments, stay on top of your work. It takes a few seconds of your time, and allows you to entertain others. Yeah!

Plus--you do earn 10 dp for every new person who takes your mission. Is that not enough incentive to pay attention? No? Hmmm...

Edit: Players are now required to take their missions! This helps to make that your vision for the mission is presented in a cohesive manner! Cheers!

Great intro, while it seems a bit obvious, I might add (to go along with the facebook) avoid any site that requires a login to view specific sections unless you're positive it will load.

My recommendation for an ideal mission length is 5-8 lightposts. If you want to go beyond that make a part 2 and portal to it from your original mission url.

NEVER USE A MAJOR PMOG PAGE IN YOUR MISSION! Never ever ever! It annoys everybody!

Also: Don't use pages that redirect to others in your mission. And I second always testing your mission. Broken missions are sad.

I'm with joe on this. Just drop some portals to lead people to your mission rather than including pmog as a stop.

Just a few minutes ago I found a mission that linked to a site that required a payed membership, among other annoyances. Let's stay away from the spam, yes?

And I also agree with Joe, people need to stop using the pmog pages just to increase their mission's traffic.

Well it's hard to realize because the mission maker was probably a subscriber who auto-logged in and didn't realize what was happening. Hopefully, he'll realize and edit the mission.

Also stay away from pages that redirect to other pages, for example:
* Anything like tinyurl
* a wiki/Special:Random page

http://pmog.com/missions/random_...

Worst. Mission. Ever.

Nothing but random Wikipedia pages that never end. It's very thrilling. Earned mines.

Next person to link digg.com in a mission will suffer all 150 of my St. Nicks!!! =)

Also, to be more friendly to your southern hemisphere friends (well, anyone not in the US), you should avoid addresses that redirect for us.

I know that's not very informative, and I doubt there's a comprehensive list, but try these on for example:

google.com redirects to google.com.au
defamer.com redirects to defamer.com.au

thereby breaking missions for us that are inflicted with big companies that insist on having server balancing ;)

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The most annoying missions are ones that take you on tours through sites that we all already know about. Good missions are about interesting topics like beards and bacon.

And potatoes and isoteric sports cars...
Monuments made from discarded cd jewel cases and steampunk computers...

Anything but more webcomics and video games; granted that those are two things that the vast majority of PMOG players love and have in common--which is why when you've taken your 50th webcomic mission, you have just died a little more on the inside...because you haven't seen anything new. Please don't suggest that I stop taking missions, I don't blaspheme, and neither should you. ; )

I am amazed and glad that the community of players has seen fit to support the work of webcomics--the artists and writers who usually do such a thing for the freedom of creativity rather than the money. 'Tis almost a noble profession...put, please, for the love of G-d, do NOT make any more webcomics missions...

But please don't grief me on that issue--it's an opinion, and you don't need to share it with me. But if you do make a webcomics mission, perhaps think of taking all the other webcomics missions available on this wonderful site. I've taken over 50 of them at last count--and only one has managed not to duplicate the comics contained in the first one made. Take that as a challenge! Be creative!
And enjoy playing...

My number one pet peeve in mission making, and it irks me to no end, is people putting generic pmog pages in their mission. Pages like forums, shoppe, codex, missions, events, home, etc. Unless its a guide of the site or something. Its a cheap tactic to try to get yourself recognized.

Just once I'd like to visit pmog and not be bombarded by slews of crappy missions that have nothing to do with pmog. I'm thinking about mining/nicking the profiles of people who continue to do this.
</rant>

Also, if your to lazy to put some time into a mission, don't make one. Sometimes it might work to just throw a bunch of pages together to get the required missions to lvl up, but if you do, at least make sure they're interesting pages that you'd actually view yourself.

not sure i agree with stand alone... some people don't like washing dishes or vacuuming, yet i would say they are a very real part of life. some people don't like making missions, i would say, just don't rate you mission high when you test it, that way i never have to see the craptastic 1 star missions people make to level up.

Well, not "overrating" your own mission and not using Pmog as a site in it whiteout reason would be the ground rule if I decided.

And you don't have to agree, as long as you have a reason to disagree, do so. I like a good argument from time to time. =)

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Interesting tips...I couldn't use a couple of pages in one of my missions (the pirate one) because they were Flash-heavy, but Portals are a good solution! I'll have to go edit it.

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Addresses linking directly to embedded/hosted video and audio won't accept lightposts, and in the rare case that they do, will break your mish. (IE, anything that ends with '.mov')

If you're bored when you take your own mission, the people taking it are going to be bored to. If it's text heavy, mix it up every few pages with some multimedia. If it's multimedia heavy, break it up with a bit of the blogosphere or research.

Mission building is about Content.
Mission building is about Interest.
Mission building is about Balance.

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There are some suggestions about mission-making on http://pmog.wikia.com It would be great to have more, especially about avoiding broken lightposts, using them (and portals) creatively, etc.

I'll bump again by saying that next mission to use a mine-target or region-specific site will get alot of the 900+ St Nicks I stocked up =)