This is probably old news to everyone but just in case there are other people like me out there I figured I would make this post. 

When I started building my site, I began hand-coding a layout of HTML tables in my JSP code.  That was definitely a mistake.  Using HTML tables to do your website layout is a tedious and not flexibile when it comes to making changes.  About halfway through the development I started doing research (yea I know research should probably have come before I got 1/2 way done) and read that most people were no longer using table but rather tableless css based development.  Unfortunately since I work on this site and my other site as a part time hobby I didn’t have time to scrap the design (although I probably should have).  So the point of this blog?  If you are someone new starting a website I recommend you follow the tableless site development pattern and throw the html tables out the window.  You can find lots of great info on tableless site development right from google.