How to spot an amateur or "backyard" web site

  
   

Welcome to the age of graphical HTML editors, export as HTML functions, and not to forget the infamous wizard (TM), it has become insanely easy to churn out a web page, or any entire site. Suffice it to say, 'every man and his dog can do it'.

However,... designing, developing and deploying a professional, quality web site is significantly more difficult than it sounds.

Many web sites annoy me greatly because of their claim to fame,... when in reality, they are completely mediocre, bordering on the downright silly. Anyway, I decided I had to air my gripes here.

If the following describes (to a large extent) your current corporate Web site, well, let's just say -- I hope there was no monetary exchange involved during the time of its deployment.

Send feedback, corrections, questions, answers, additions to: benjamin.lee@realthought.net

  
   

The signs

  
   
Images  
 
   
  • No ALT parameter values for important images, for example navigation images.
  • Huge images. Too many images.
  • Too many animated images, and moving parts. Too many spinning images. ;-)
  • Microsoft clipart. <shudder>
  • Ugly background (tiled) images.
  • Pictures of large amounts of text. What happened to real text? I mean, with a hand-written letter, would you send a photo of your letter, or the letter? Strange.
  
   
Fonts  
 
   
  • Too many fonts. Ugly fonts. Bad fonts... which leads onto... Weak (no?) cross platform testing. But using Courier was intended right? ;-)
  
   
Colours  
 
   
  • Too many colours. Bad colours!
  • No BODY BGCOLOR value. All web browsers do not automatically have a white background. Geez.
  • Black background with black text. Good one.
  
   
Content  
 
   
  • Spelling and grammar mistakes -- I hope I do not have any. ;-)
  
 
Media  
 
   
  • Flash banners that distract the user, and detract from the information content (if any) of the page.
  • Annoying sounds that just keep looping.
  
   
Tables  
 
   
  • Big tables. Too many nested tables. Too many, big, nested tables. ;-)
  
   
Java and JavaScript  
 
   
  • "Sorry you don't have Java" messages.
  • Java applets for simple animation or adornments.
  • Too much JavaScript. JavaScript is not "the be all and end all", my friend.
  
   
Frames  
 
   
  • Frames that are not coded properly. Too many frames.
  
   
Layout  
 
   
  • Poor layout. Where's the menu?
  • Too many DIV and LAYER tags.
  • Too much server-side scripting; resulting in slowly generated pages and, preventing proxies from reliably caching anything. Ah grr!
  • "Best viewed in ... x ..." messages.
  • Extra long pages.
  
 
Site Organisation  
 
   
  • The site is plagued with "Error 404" messages, missing images and outdated hyperlinks.
  • META GENERATOR tags with insulting values, like Microsoft this and that.
  
   

Links

For more information on web design, style, tips and all that jazz, check out:
 

  
   

Send feedback, corrections, questions, answers, additions to: benjamin.lee@realthought.net

 

  
   

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benjamin lee