20 Ways To Make Your Website Crap
Hello everyone, many website owners make schoolboy errors, that makes their website, well, crap. These errors can cause an annoyance to a large percentage of visitors, and can actually drive traffic away. If you avoid all the reasons I have listed below, you are sure to have an outstanding annoying free website!
Just remember value. If you provide that on your website, your visitors will keep coming back time and time again for more.
Use A Free Hosting Company
If you use a free hosting company, you may often get a huge ad on top of your website, before your content actually starts. This can put people off, and can look ugly. Also you wont have a unique url, it will be something like yoursite.freewebspace.com. I’m not saying that sites like freewebs and tripod are crap, it’s a great place to start of, just you cant really look professional hosted on a free service like that. Instead, I would strongly recommend to use a reliable shared hosting company like Host Gator.
Have No Content Above The Fold
Some websites have huge headers, and if visitors want to find content, they have to scroll really far down the page to find any content.
Have A Splash Page
Having a page before your actual website, that says click here to enter, with loads of heavy images can take a long time to load for people with a slow Internet connection, and can look very bad (unless you are a pro designer). You are actually making it harder for people to access your website. Some splash pages can look awesome, like this one below, but it can still be an annoyance to your website visitors. I would generally avoid them.
Create Your Website Just With Flash
Flash websites can sometimes be awesome, but most of them with heavy content can take a long time to load, even on a broadband connection. Plus search engines wont be able to index each individual page on your site, because it’s all flash. S.E.O will suck, and you will have to do some heavy manual promotion.
Not Check Your Website For Cross Browser Compatibility
If you want your website to be accessible by everyone, then it needs to be viewable by most if not all browsers, or at least latest browsers.
Have Music Playing On Your Website
Websites that automatically play music when loaded are very annoying. Sometimes people can’t find the pause of stop button, and it can be very annoying and off putting.
Opt In For A Second Best Domain
I have nothing wrong with .net or .biz, but why opt for second best domain? When you know you really want that .com!
Link To Non Existing Pages
People always link to stuff that doesn’t always exist. This can be very annoying for the end user, especially if they have been searching for a long time for something, and then your linking to something that’s not actually there.
Lock Copy And Pasting
Websites which have a lock on, that prevents people from right clicking can be very annoying. I know they are just trying to stop people nabbing their content, but even still *cough* print screen *cough*.
Build Your Website Out Of Tables
Building your website out of tables is a very bad move these days. XHTML and CSS is what you should be using. I have nothing against tables, and you should still use them within your site if needs be, just don’t have your whole site based around tables.
Have Annoying Pop-Ups
Websites that have pop-ups every time you visit them can be very off putting, and most of all very annoying. Don’t do it, even if you are getting paid a measly 1 cent per pop-up. It will put your visitors off!
Slow Loading Pages
Pages that contain hundreds of intense images can often crash people’s browsers, or just slow down their computer, and painfully take a long time to load.
Having A Counter On Your Website
Displaying a free counter on your website, can look very bad. You shouldn’t be showing off how many hits you get, that’s what sites like Alexa and compete are for. Things you should be showing off are your RSS Subscriber count and your Twitter Followers.
Stupid Repeating Background Images
Websites that use the same small background image that repeats itself both horizontally and vertically are generally crap. For example, a Pokemon image repeating itself all over your screen. Very annoying!
Use A Bad Color Palette
It can be very bad to use a color palette on your website, where all the colors clash. A great place to find color palettes is ColorLovers or ColorSchemer.
Use Stupid Text Effects
Using text effects that you get off these free online text generators can make your website look very tacky, not ‘cool’ as they make out it will look. My advice, use photoshop for your text effects.
Being Inconsistent
Using all different types of fonts across your website is inconsistent. If you use one font for your paragraphs and one font for your headers, then you should be safe. The same goes for text size, colors, etc.
Having To Scroll Horizontally Across Websites
Don’t you hate it when websites are too large for your screen? I’m not taking about the odd few pixels, like double if not triple your screen width. Websites should generally be no more than 1000px wide, 900 to be safe.
Using Rubbish Alternative Software
Say for instance you were building a big forum website, and you wanted it to achieve and have a thriving community of active members. But you couldn’t afford vBulletin or Invision Power Board, so you settled for phpBB (second best). It’s free for a reason. (phpBB is a very good forum software for beginners, but it just cant compete with the big boys).
Also some comments say I’m implying that WordPress is crap, but WordPress isn’t second best, it’s the best.
Animated Gif’s And General Rubbish
Basic website clutter can just make a website crap. Unnecessary junk that fills web pages, just to have content is very bad. A great example of this is the worst website in the world. Click on the image below to be amazed!
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Ted (3 years ago)
Yeah, I have to take issue with your denigration of PHPBB. It’s a much better product than vBulletin in my opinion. Easier to setup, maintain, and is much more secure.
I’d also add that a good way to make your website crap is to have banners on your site, but all they do is advertise that you are advertising. Seems kind of pointless.
Andy (3 years ago)
Im not so much digging phpBB, i used to use it, but in my opinion, vBulletin is much better. You pay for what you get (in some cases).
Greg H. (3 years ago)
“all they do is advertise that you are advertising”
Ha! Great point! Whenever I see one of those, I can’t help but think, ‘if this was such a good advertising vessel, someone would see this ad and want to buy the space.’
Scott (3 years ago)
Agreed! Wow, someone who has visited this site I can finally see eye-to-eye with!
David (3 years ago)
Have to agree with most of the items.
Regarding indexing a full flash website: Google and Adobe are working together to get those websites indexed better and better… For now non-flash sites are indexed better, but in the (near) future, flash sites will be indexed as well (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html)
Andy (3 years ago)
Oooh, i heard about this quite a while ago, but i didn’t think they were actually going to go ahead with it. Nice!
jeremy (3 years ago)
For the most part, I agree, but I also have to agree with Scott, above.
A distinction should be made between ad-supported free crap and community-supported, quality open source software or high-quality free services (PHP, MySQL, Linux, Apache, Basecamp, CodeIgniter, Drupal).
Todd Michael Greene (3 years ago)
Another thing that makes websites crap is misspellings, which this post is full of. The info is good and interesting, but difficult to read due to numerous errors. Proofreading before publishing does wonders. Reading out loud before publishing is awesome.
Ned (3 years ago)
agreed.
huntermagnus999 (8 months ago)
Not only the poor spelling but also the poor grammar; “annoying free” would work better as “annoyance free”. Would appreciate a bit less of the “adjective as noun” game.
Janeson (3 years ago)
I’d be interested in knowing your reasoning behind saying that sites built out of tables are crap….
Thanks!
Andy (3 years ago)
New Web Standards.
Will Anderson (3 years ago)
Not sure if I’d call web standard standards over 10 years old new, but OK
Tables add extra bloat to your site and do a poor job of describing your content. This makes it harder for services like Google to index your site, as well as making it less accessible to people with disabilities (blind people using screen readers for example).
Hope Bryant (3 years ago)
Adding to what Will has to say, tables look (when one looks at the coding) less professional in the long run, especially to other designers.
Tables may take longer to load (last I heard), because the browser is reading them differently and looking for tabular data rather then general website code. Also tables are “bulkier” in terms of file size as well, because of their very nature. (These two may be tiny say compared to an image, but shaving off every little bit -can- count on that nit picky level!)
Since Browsers read tables differently, as Will pointed out, their accessibility rules are different. A screen-reader will read your site very oddly if they are coded in tables. I’m serious. This also ties into how the code validates as well. Tables require certain attributes (especially with accessibility in mind) and can cause issues with the code validating accurately.
W3C standards currently have the structure (layout framework) separate from the styling.(CSS). You can do a lot of the same things one used to do with tables with your p, ul,ol, li,h#, tags and more!
The Only benefit to using tables to style or layout a website is that you can get two columns to stretch vertically, evenly. But there are several (three I last checked) ways to get a CSS-pure design to do the same thing.
Tables do have their place! They are often used in price-comparison layouts, or tv-show time tables, sharing scientific data, etc. These are the normal uses for tables.
Vincent Le Pes (3 years ago)
Tables are bad because they are intended for tabular data…anything used for a different purpose than it’s intention in HTML is bad because programs that interface your site (mostly search engines but there are more and more apps indexing you for other reasons these days) will not know what to do with the information. For SEO in particular, you are basically telling the search spiders that everything in your site is ‘tabular data contained within the content’, rather than the content itself…which won’t take a big bite out of your rankings but every little bit counts
. Tables are intended for organizing data, the same way you use them on paper and in spreadsheets, and indexing services will treat it as such.
Tim (3 years ago)
Wrong. The engines appeared *after* the html standard and adapted to it by human algo’s that read content and they evolved as people changed the way they code. A crawler is built to interpret the data no matter how it is displayed (lists, spans, divs, tables, p). Often time CSS abuses lists, which really makes little difference in how things are indexed versus tabular data. They have become so used to bad design and structure, they just go with it.
Chris Berry (3 years ago)
If free software is crap, why is your website built on WordPress?
Andy (3 years ago)
Not saying all free software is crap, but some of it is.
Vincent Le Pes (3 years ago)
Wow, you are really getting a lot of flack for dissing on free software…I didin’t think you meant ALL free software either, just to chime in in your defense
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Vincent,
Exactly.. so many people feel the need to jump on the band wagon and flame us for helping people. Some FREE stuff is rubbish, some is obviously good such as WordPress.
Michael
Gary (3 years ago)
21. Use any bulletin board software that forces you to sign in just to _read_
The problem with most helmets that start itty bitty websites is that they get a few interested users wanting to discuss things and….
…Suddenly they think wow – this is all my content and I must protect it. Wrong – it is the Internets content given to you in trust by the people who wrote it (Just like this comment text)
I understand the need to (openid) sign in to post a comment (responsibility) but a lot of bulletin board crap asks you to sign in before you can just read and browse.
Here is a question for budding webmasters who have left comments:
“Which of bulletin board software can you deploy (free or otherwise) where content is searchable by end users without login?”*
?vBulletin? Not in my experience
phpBB – cannot say – response appreciated
Any others you care to contribute.
*By searchable by end users I mean with a browser, rather than, making content available _to googlebot only_ as some trickster sites seem to be doing.
Here is a final suggestion for the php skilled who have commented here. How about contributing to phpBB to make things better. You are a php guru perhaps? so extend or fix it and contribute your change.
Neil (3 years ago)
Regarding pop-ups – I’ll agree with you if these are ads for sites for other people. But what about the video overlay technology where a website owner has the opportunity to welcome visitors or provide them specific information about their site. This can be accomplished by using a company spokesmodel or by the website owner or representative themselves. As an example, see http://graberbiz.straightedgemarketing.com/
Vincent Le Pes (3 years ago)
WOW I will have to majorly disagree with that…those popups that block the page (the content you are looking for), talk out loud without your choice (bad move if you want to target anyone working in a shared office – just as bad as auto-playing music), and the people in the pitch generally remind me of a late night infomercial or someone trying to sell time share. No thanks. I personally close the tab the moment I notice one of these, and I think most people do the same.
@maxbeatty (3 years ago)
I think my old landlord’s (Pavilion Properties in Bloomington, IN) web page does more than half of these things http://pavprop.com It is one of the worst websites I can remember using. They were just as pathetic.
Eduardo Baldan (3 years ago)
I have to agree with Scott. Free Stuff doesn’t means crap. Maybe sometimes…
What can we say about WordPress, Drupal, Joomla… UBUNTU.
Anyway, thank’s for the article. It have some very good points…
(sorry for the bad english)
Richard - Accessible Web Design (3 years ago)
Implying that phpBB is rubbish is harsh. I can’t comment on whether other systems are better but it certainly can’t be rubbish given how many sites use it successfully.
The comment about .org being a second best option is just wrong. .org is for intended for non-profit organisations and .com is intended for commercial organisations, you are trying to compare apples with oranges. I do agree that there are second best domain TLDs though such as .biz or even .me
Hope Bryant (3 years ago)
Also .net are meant for networks. The .com, .net, and .org all have reason behind their naming conventions.
Mobile devices have been given their own through .mobi. It isn’t a bad idea to use it but not by itself. Most people should have them (imo) along -with- their main website.
.tv is good for video-heavy sites (Word Press has it for their video tutorial site).
But the others, I have to agree. They are either supporting urls (like .mobi and .info are imo), or secondary in weight and authority.
Martin Bean (3 years ago)
Why the hate for phpBB? I don’t mind it, clients like it, and clients’ visitors like it and can use it.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Martin,
Thats because they didn’t pay for it, I think if you asked them to compare other software, they would then change there minds.
Michael
Anne Witton (3 years ago)
Agree with the comments about your first point. Another good free hosting company is http://www.yola.com which offers free hosting, completely ad free (unlike your blog). I also do have a unique URL which points to my freely hosted site: http://www.annewitton.org.uk
Andy (3 years ago)
What I mean is sites like tripod put unwanted ads up. We sell our ad spots, and approve our advertisers adverts, so it fits in with the site.
SMARTS (3 years ago)
AGREED!!!
Will (3 years ago)
Can I add one to the list:
Websites with auto play video, normally ads but not always. It’s guaranteed to make me leave straight away
Shane - Inspiring Your Success (3 years ago)
Especially those ones with the horrible people that just speak.
Marc (3 years ago)
Where is “use comic sans”?
Shane - Inspiring Your Success (3 years ago)
This is a very good point. I have tried to make my 404 pages user friendly but have not quite succeeded. May I point out that the author of this post is not actually the owner of the website?
Also, no offense to Andy but I have to agree with Scott. In this day and age, most open source FREE software is better because it is made as a community rather than as a job.
Tyler Jefford (3 years ago)
Nice list, I will have to say I agree with all the points.
Scott (3 years ago)
I’m getting sick of this constant barrage of “free stuff is rubbish”. I’m not sure if you’ve looked at all, but what does a website commonly run on? MySQL (which is free), PHP (which is also free) and most servers use Linux (oh, would you look at that, that’s free too!). Why would I go and pay for some ridiculously overpriced forum software that runs on free stuff when I get a free option that’s BETTER than the crap I have to pay for? Not to mention that phpbb’s security is a lot better out of the box (or .zip file I should say) than vBulletin’s.
James McWhorter (3 years ago)
Good point, Scott. I think a lot of us have gotten where we are now because of “free stuff”.
twe4ked (3 years ago)
Thanks Scott! (I like you website running on (free) joomala and free phpBB btw.
I also wanted to point out a great free webhost that comes with:
- php
- mysql
- cpanel
- no ads
-1500 MB storage
- 100 GB/month bandwidth
http://www.000webhost.com
Cheers
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Scott,
Its not FREE stuff in general, its the fact that people don’t want to have a good website because they don’t want to pay a small price. The fact is PHPBB isn’t anywhere near as good as software such as vBulletin, I have used all of the main software and I think any webmaster could agree with me on the fact that PHPBB isn’t the best.
Things such as WordPress are FREE and is great compared to expensive alternatives.
Michael
Scott (3 years ago)
Small price?
If you call $150 up-front for IPB then $25 every 6 months for upgrades a “small price” then I think you need a reality check. And vBulletin, $180 up-front then $60 every year after that for upgrades.
That vs. free software, free updates, and a community full of awesome mods and styles (that for the most part are also free, if you pay for a theme it’s generally a REALLY good one); I think I know which one I’m throwing my support behind.
Your preference is vBulletin, mine is phpBB, I value everyone’s opinions and preferences, I just don’t want other to be blind-sided into thinking paid software is miles ahead of the free stuff; because it’s not.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hey Scott,
But lets face it, if vBulletin was FREE you would use that instead because it is miles better. Not 1 forum that I read uses vBulletin….
Sitepoint.com
DigitalPoint.com
TalkFreelance.com
WarriorForum.com
All use vBulletin and that’s just naming a few of dozens… Can’t say all these successful webmasters are wrong. I can tell you for a fact that if one of these sites used PHPBB I wouldn’t use it as much if at all just because from a user point of view, I hate it.
You have your own opinion and your entitled to it, but at the end of the day paid things are typically better.
Michael
Scott (3 years ago)
Of course, a list of all the sites that can afford to throw hundreds of dollars away on forum software and would gladly go and pay for vBulletin or IPB, however for some to start out with it’s not that easy. For anyone that is just starting they may not want to throw away $160 for forum software just yet, so phpBB provides a good option to launch with little investment.
@Vincent: I’m just sick of phpBB always taking the flak, why not point the finger at MyBB or SMF for once? They’re basically flying under the radar… Unless they’re not a rubbish alternative?
And what’s this bit about competing with the “big boys”? Last I looked phpBB was doing a pretty good job of competing with vB and IPB, it won me over after IPB went proprietary.
tintedPixel (3 years ago)
I know a lot of us in the biz *chuckle* at this list, mostly because we have all run into a client or two who have unequivocally demanded at least one of these in a project.
The saddest part is there are some people still out there pedaling the; talking heads, background music, blinking text and animated.
http://www.pagesbytom.com/
nuff said.
Tom McAdams (3 years ago)
I have had a few of those in the past also. However, I do not have any music by Talking Heads…
nor have I ever used ‘blinking text’.
Pedaling implies suggesting it, never happened. Maybe ‘someone’ lost a client to me and was not happy with it…
Grow Up.
I used a background once that the client told me was his, and within a matter of minutes of me finding out it was not, I changed it. (you remember that day right??) I admitted I was wrong, so for that you insult me. It is spelled ENOUGH, not NUFF.
Children, what can you do…
Dave E (3 years ago)
>>> If you use a free hosting company, you may often get a huge ad on top of your website, before your content actually starts <<<
You mean like all that crap on the right hand side of you web page!
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello,
We aren’t saying all FREE things are bad, but from my experience, most PAID things are better and I have to say I have used PHPBB and its no where near good enough for running a successful forum.
With domains, a .TK .ORG or anything else will just make the site look like they couldn’t afford a .COM or they didn’t care if they got one which for me is a turn off.
With proof reading, I don’t care so much as long as its 90% alright, a lot of our most successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic ( including myself ) and I feel people only point this out to make themselves look better then us.
Michael
GreyGoose (3 years ago)
.com, .co. whatever suits your site or sites purpose, price or caring isn’t as relevant as meaning and purpose and I feel people only point this out to make themselves look better then others.
With proof reading, it’s especially important if you’re dyslexic, many of the successful people I know are dyslexic and each of them admitted they ask someone else to proof read their material before publishing. Weird huh?
As a professional web-developer I maintain that correct spelling is essential – if you spell your html or php incorrectly the site may not display correctly.
I do agree with most of the points raised above, especially in relation to open source material which is largely driven by a desire to create rather than a desire to make money, I’ve used all sorts of paid for software and applications that were rubbish when compared to a free open source equivalent.
Does anyone know why people use blogging products for creating websites, I refer especially to WordPress, which although good for blogging isn’t a patch on ModX for CMS site building.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Maureen,
Most people ask for these things because they are uneducated and think blinking and flashing effects is what makes a website amazing.
Michael
Ayo Adigun (3 years ago)
Well put together. Although the whole ad thing is a bit… rich!
Helmut (3 years ago)
Just a hint: Displaying your RSS subscribers and twitter followers might seems edgy and appropriate now, so did the counter things a couple of years ago.
I say: If you wanna yerk off to something, get a mirror.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Helmut,
RSS Subscribers is part of making your readers think your site is popular and incourages them to join the RSS themselves because so many other people have. This is a good thing to feature on your website.
Michael
Aadil Pitafi (3 years ago)
I don’t really agree with the first point. There are actually some really good free cPanel web hosts that have an excellent up-time and also allow you to have your own domain.
All other points are absolutely right. I agree with all of them. Thanks for sharing!
Dedé Villela (3 years ago)
I’m glad that my site don’t have any of this s**t!!!
Angela (3 years ago)
Great article. I just finished my first website (which is horrible) for a class and am eager to make it better. Your tips are very timely for me (although most of them I was aware of). The Color Schemer site is fantastic also, thanks for the link!
Mark Duffy (3 years ago)
All good. Im looking at joomla right now, but trying to resist the urge to use it for my main site portfollio. Mainly because, Im finding it hard to make time to do it. I really think that if your going to use a site to highlight your skills or a site for a web design company, you should concider doing it from scratch. Still love joomla though.
Scott (3 years ago)
I love Joomla, I still enjoy making a site from scratch but I love the ease that Joomla is to both install and theme (not to mention use), I love it!
Oliver (3 years ago)
I agree with all 20 of these but since google is working on indexing flash better then we might see more flash sites. The only free stuff I use is WordPress for RSS.
All the sites I design stay well away from all these especially tables for layouts as it makes it harder for google to crawl each site.
Chris (3 years ago)
You must have read my mind. Great list! I like your point about Splash pages. If you sell on your site, make it as easy as possible for someone to give you money. Don’t set up a roadblock.
Brian Cassidy (3 years ago)
I haven’t even read this post yet… im just making sure posts need to be approved cause i entered the contest and my comment didn’t show up…
Daniel M (3 years ago)
Haha Michael, Andy… Just reading the comments here has made my day, I love how strongly people feel about different points!
Keep up the good work guys, great post.
Jim (3 years ago)
There is nothing wrong with using tables. Why exactly are they crap when I know I can make them do just as much as any CSS in a fraction of the time. With no cross browser compatibility issues.
GreyGoose (3 years ago)
There is something majorly wrong with tables. They were never intended to be used for site layout, (at the outset of the internet websites weren’t expected to contain much more than text and content tables much like a spreadsheet on a “Word” document).
Using tables for layout was basically a hack to place images and content in fixed positions when there was no other way. Some people have continued to be use layout tables to allow for Internet Exploder 6, when a bit of extra work on CSS will achieve the same result.
Using layout tables is simply poor design, we haven’t used them for at least 4-5 years, we try to focus on fast loading valid code that is also accessible.
Try doing a major layout change on a site done in tables, that’s when the time consumption really comes in.
Rebecca (3 years ago)
I have to chime in on the pop-up speakers. I hate them, and will navigate away from a page in order to avoid being spoken to by them. This may be a little personal quirk that some of us have — but why irritate any of your visitors for no particular benefit?
There may be people who have a pet peeve over interesting color schemes, grammatically correct content, and standards-compliant code, but they’re going to be rare. People who dislike pop-ups are common enough that we shouldn’t turn them away.
thunderzeal (3 years ago)
i think THIS website is the worst ever :
http://www.djmastersound.com/
or just at egality :p
Albert Pak (3 years ago)
Very interesting pointers. Great article.
Paul (3 years ago)
While it was certainly true in the past that you could not look professional on a free web host that is not true any longer. As mentioned above.
http://www.000webhost.com
Great ad free. Free host. My site runs on it and you would never know it’s not a dedicated server. http://www.codetricky.com.
Other than that you are dead on!
Steve (3 years ago)
Love your stuff.
Geoserv (3 years ago)
Couldn’t have made a better list. Good stuff
Stuart Noton (3 years ago)
Good list, agree with about 80% of it .. the point I would like to throw into the blender is that everything has a context. Annoying music playing on a website? What if you’re a music vendor, musician, ringtone creator, a/v technician.. you see what I’m saying. Most things have their place somewhere.
theodin (3 years ago)
no…… music!?
Ann (3 years ago)
Thanks for the tip on tables, it spurred me to update my HTML programming knowledge to the DIV / CSS approach. It’s kind of embarrassing to know that I’ve been doing it wrong for so many years *blush* (I learned HTML a LONG time ago)
ann (3 years ago)
By the by, for people looking for examples of why CSS, check out this site: http://www.csszengarden.com/
The links on the right side of the page are examples of the same exact page with only the external CSS doc changed… how neat is that?
Optimised Onion (3 years ago)
Oh dear, guess I fail on most of these points. Oh well, better luck next time
SnowFoxCreations (3 years ago)
It depends on what type of “free” you’re discussing- open-source software projects are free, and are (almost without exception) better than their paid counterparts. Open-source is powered by obsessive fans and code junkies who use the software themselves, and constantly try to improve upon it. The fact that the code is available for anyone’s perusal holds the creators accountable to the end users, making is difficult to sneak in malware or errors without someone catching it immediately.
- an open-source fan
Lucas (3 years ago)
LOL i do the print-sreen all the time
diebere (3 years ago)
very well researched thanks
Cjay (3 years ago)
how about tag clouds… like on this website
tag clouds are really cheesy maybe this should be reason number 21
oh and reason number 22 empty spaces that say ADVERTISE HERE.
number 23, and yes prefab templates like what this website uses……
nepdud (3 years ago)
yeah, gud points..
Web Design by 314media.com St. Louis (3 years ago)
Lol .. Funnies … Not too nice; but hey; truth hurts…
Elliot (3 years ago)
phpBB is very powerful if you have a little bit of time to modify it and template it, there is an abundance of modifications from the community to add, and I definitely prefer it over the likes of vB and IPB.
Open source, free stuff is the foundation of the web nowadays. This website runs on a server running a Linux Distro (all of which free), it runs on WordPress (free and mighty powerful, just like phpBB!).
My last point is that free hosting is now available with all of the standards of paid hosting, and I think the point of un-professionalism is out of the question when you look at providers like http://30mb.co.uk or http://novahost.org
Let’s face it, most of these points are true, but nowadays people who care about their website and content should have the basic instinct to avoid a lot of this.
Rob Brideson (3 years ago)
In all, the 20 best ways to mess up your website are a matter of opinion in some respects, although the general ideas are completely sound. I have to be clear that from a business point of view 99% of this will be found out at your customers expense and that is when they come to a web designer to help them out.
I think where opions will differ are, as Elliot says, depends on whether you are into open source, have time to craft templates, use commercial templates or make your own for particular instances.
I also have to agree that there are some good free hosting companies out there too and if all you are doing is loading up one or two pages then this may only be all that you need so long as the service up time is reasonable. I will say one thing though as a hoster myself. If your service is down then your visitors are too. So I would not recommend it for anyone running a business unless the service it outstanding, which invariable the say, “you get what you pay for”, is very relevant here.
If you are dealing with businesses that are designing their own websites and messing them up, they will soon come to you and ask you to fix it for them or from experience ask you to build the things that they would not have been able to do themselves because of a lack of skills and time to learn them. After all that is why we are in business in the first place.
Open source is cost effective in as far as the basics in most cases are already there. You can and are legally allowed to make the necessary changes to source code etc. to save on time and resources whilst giving the customer what they want at a much lower cost and still turn a reasonable profit yourself.
I have to agree with Cjay. Cheesy tag clouds instead of proper search engine optimisation so that crawlers can find your content clouds the page a bit (Pun intended). You might as well use a menu for your content so that users can find it and crawlers can follow it. Not so sure about prefab templates as they do have their uses. Advertise here smacks of desperation and personally businesses that do this are companies that I tend to be wary of.
I must admit I like the ColorLovers and ColorSchemers websites. You just can’t get enough inspiration in this world.