20 Ways To Make Your Website Crap
Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by Web Design in Web Development
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, its 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 your 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 its 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 peoples 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). Its 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 isnt second best, its 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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bobby
06. Aug, 2009
i’m really convinced with all of your points.. like it!!
diebere
07. Aug, 2009
very well researched thanks
Cjay
09. Aug, 2009
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
23. Nov, 2009
yeah, gud points..
Web Design by 314media.com St. Louis
15. Jan, 2010
Lol .. Funnies … Not too nice; but hey; truth hurts…
Elliot
13. Aug, 2009
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
14. Aug, 2009
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.
Xm
19. Aug, 2009
this was really really helpful, i’m in my first year of multimedia at college and we are making websites and i have made atleast three of these mistakes. thanks for the tips.
govindaraj
19. Aug, 2009
really its awesome. thanks
Daniel
09. Sep, 2009
Hi,
You don’t always have to be consistent, sometimes consistency is boring.
tar,
Will
06. Oct, 2009
Good article however phpBB is not “rubbish alternative software”, a lot of people don’t like vbulletin.
Bec
23. Oct, 2009
Oh My God. I almost had a fit when I saw that website. Yuck.
This is really helpful
Cheers
Maggi Blue
10. Nov, 2009
Funny, the ads displayed on this post seem to indicate that all these rules are null when there is money to be made.
Greg
10. Nov, 2009
Bringing back the Marquee and Blink tags just what we’ve been missing.
neat design
10. Nov, 2009
I think at some point or another we have all been guilty of a number of these sins.
But don’t put flash down just yet there are still some cracking flash only websites out there which could only be created in flash.
neat design.
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18. Nov, 2009
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Lauren
19. Nov, 2009
Great post. I unfortunately have been having issues w/ the hosting company and registrar for my domain so I’m a blogspot so I am guilty of the free domain thing. But I agree w/ all your point, thanks especially for the Color Schemer link, had not heard of this one.
jobo
21. Nov, 2009
All very good points. The only problem is when the client wants some crappy stuff on his website and you can’t get him to change his mind!
Shama Kern
22. Nov, 2009
I just came across your various posts and I really like them. You don’t mince words, you point out many mistakes that I have made, and I feel it will get me on track with my blog.
Web Designers In Houston
24. Nov, 2009
A valid W3C web site is a good business investment also.
Jewels
24. Nov, 2009
Roared with laughter at the world worst website. The music just did it! Fantastic info and tips. Just starting out myself and I am learning every day from your website. Thank you a million times over!!!
Thomas
29. Nov, 2009
Linking to non existing pages is kinda hopeless. Yes, you should check your website for it, but you can’t help other people linking to a page that doesn’t exist on your website anymore.
With a fancy 404 page you’ll keep more visitors on your website when something goes wrong.
Vince Golangco
29. Nov, 2009
Ahhhh, great checklist to make sure my site is somewhat decent…. Great list and very practical!
Larry McCauley
10. Dec, 2009
Re flash and seo: SWFAddress and SWFObject. SWFAddress makes it possible for google to index every page of the site, and SWFObject offers the bots alternate html content to index whilst setting up a switch that seamlessly directs users into your flash site.
Basically it’s Javascript to the rescue
The default (and other) html publish settings in Flash are a total disgrace. This is where I think so much of the bad rep for flash sites comes from. Anyone just blindly publishing in flash will produce a site that may look and act brilliantly but be impossible to SEO.
But a good and valuable checklist!
Loreauville Phil
26. Dec, 2009
I have to agree with what a couple of posters have said already, that this “Checklist” is more a matter of opinion than facts. I do agree with the majority of what’s stated. But I think some of it is more a lack of professionalism than anything else.
I do have mixed feelings about the Free Web Hosting. My experiences with free web hosts have proven to me that [most] of them are worth are worth every penny you pay, but for some people and circumstances, they are perfect.
And in my opinion the biggest “crap-alert” of a website is lack of usable content.
Tom
04. Jan, 2010
Nice. Gave me a smile!
Elias
18. Jan, 2010
Stupid Repeating Background Images… seriously, this depends on the image!
Kathleen
18. Jan, 2010
Nice list to keep newbies to the website world heading in the right direction – it’s often the basics which are missed from website design. Keep it simple always works best for me.
Ben Nuttall
18. Jan, 2010
Everything I live by! Seriously all very good points.
…except – you missed ‘Use frames’!
(and I don’t see what’s wrong with phpBB)
Azad Shaikh
24. Jan, 2010
thanks for helpful points. lol.
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