3) There should be a very definite contrast between the hue and saturation of the links and the background. I try to make the visited link a different colour too. While the default purple is just vile, imho it is a good idea to have a different colour. I've used red in the past quite successfully.I tried out red, and I found that a) it required all fonts to be bold or it looked really awful and b) it looked like poster paints. I looked at sites that talked about colour theory and the wheel, but I just don't have the training to back it all up. I had meant to make the visited and unvisited colours the same - can't see the point in reminding you where you've been... does not compute.
Try a site like http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html that lets you choose a base colour and then it finds a bunch of other colours that are supposedly "harmonious".
google for "color scheme" and have a look around
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