Other than content... up-to-date content?
Can't really stress enough how important being up to date on news and info truly is.
Do you like flashy - moving - shiny things on sites? Or do they get old really fast and bore you?
I just like flashy-moving-SHINIES in general. I'm likely to play with buttons and the like if they do stuff when you hover the mouse
How much colour do you think a site should have when imparting information?
Just enough, and for the love of everything NOT RED AND BLUE x__x Coordinating colours, please people.
Is coloured font distracting from the message?
As long as it's easy to read, I don't believe so. I enjoy a good colour scheme.
Should each page have some form of graphics or buttons, or something that's not words? Should some of these be animated?
Little pictures are good stuff, and you can seriously go mad with Flash sites. Of course, anything big takes way too long to load for me, but if I had some sweet DSL, I'd be happy with a lot of graphics.
Just making sure the information is correct and worded interestingly is usually a good way to go. I've been to sites that the person's obviously just had a thesaurus binge, and that's not really... good. The words don't always have the same definition as they were looking for. Then we get to point and laugh <__<