If you’re starting from scratch or are undertaking an Unfailed Redesign, your Web shop needs all the following to be considered au courant:

1. A homepage with valid HTML and a site with mostly-valid HTML (no goddamned tables). Really, you have to use HTML 4.01 Strict now
2. Custom 404 pages
3. An hCard, probably on the About or Contact pages, which you also need
4. A customized search-results page (I haven’t bothered)
5. A blog with RSS that most or everybody in the shop writes for
6. An update or What’s New page with RSS
7. Original research or code contributions
8. A Flickr account that is regularly updated
9. A trail of comments on other people’s sites and on Flickr, always linking back to the same page (I use joeclark.org/weblogs nine times out of ten)
10. Your own tag; it has to be easy to type and remember and must be unique
11. UserIDs on AccessifyForum, A List Apart, a few other sites

And ultimately:

• One or more articles at A List Apart
• Your own podcast (with transcripts)
• Your own book
• A trail of speaking engagements at all the right conferences
• Your own conference