World's Worst Website

drhyde on 2003-12-29T21:10:30

Is this the world's worst website? How many sucky things can you spot? Let us try to count them:

pointless "1066 country" graphic. at least make it a link!
pointless national flag ...
... which is animated
title graphic has no ALT text
menu graphics have no ALT text
most images are badly dithered
whole site is clearly at least a year out of date
pointless foreign flags under title (such images usually link to a translated version of the site, although what translations to use for the EU and US versions is mystifying)
lists McDonalds as a place to eat. Are there really so few other choices (the answer is no, there's plenty of others that aren't listed, some are even worth going to)
the Kings Arms, Ninfield - isn't in Bexhill, it's in, errm, Ninfield
click on "where to stay" then on "hotels" - there's no obvious way to get back to the second-level menu. Same applies to other multi-level whatsits.
where to stay: hotels: three of those eight hotels are not in Bexhill. Same applies to other places to stay
where to visit: gardens: lists plenty of gardens out of the town, but not the Manor Barn gardens in Bexhill old town
where to visit: local resorts. resorts. hahaha.
local resorts. no really, that one's so bad i have to mention it twice.
eastbourne tourist information office is apparently a resort worthy of visiting. as opposed to destroying in thermonuclear fire along with the rest of eastbourne.
apostropherror in "telephone no's"
list of emergency service numbers doesn't include the coastguard or lifeboat.
nor does it list 999 - useful information for foreign visitors
phone numbers do not follow ITU's standard format
lists phone numbers for thoroughly unattractice "local attractions" but not for some that might be worth visiting
has a menu entry for local government phone numbers but it's not actually a link
travel phone numbers don't include any for the local bus companies, the railway, or local cabs
pity the fool who tries to dial +44 1424 to get bexhill post office (which is apparently a travel company)
this photograph
and the spelling in the filename
and this photograph which is apparently of the Manor Barn gardens which are so scandalously missed out above.
of course, if that's really what they looked like, maybe the author should go into business selling his ImpressionistSpecs
apostropherror at "Kid's" in this page
in the page that links to, why aren't those venues listed elsewhere? I see no events here!
the "cinemas" link goes to another Really Shitty Site, rather than telling me what's on at the local cinema. Not that that cinema ever shows anything of interest.
there is a link to the cinema in "business links", although it's broken. Try this instead.
and you would have thought that "business links" would be businessish resources, not some random collection of links that would be better put elsewhere. Or not on the site at all

and that's not even considering the appalling quality of the HTML.

I don't believe I can think of a single good thing to write about this site.

Here's one good thing to say about it.

jordan on 2003-12-29T22:26:16

Updated site Coming Soon

weblint says...

petdance on 2003-12-30T02:39:59

$ weblint http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (17:38) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (23:92) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (25:102) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (27:103) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (29:104) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (31:95) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (33:98) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (35:98) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (37:93) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (39:238) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (41:166) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (83:19) <IMG> does not have ALT text defined http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (90:27) Invalid character \xA9 should be written as © http://www.bexhill-on-sea.co.uk/ (92:33) <IMG> tag has no HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes.

99% of web sites are obsolete

ajt on 2003-12-30T10:51:51

You would think that making a good web site was hard. Most web sites are so awful, you would be mistaken into thinking that it is difficult!

In my experience most sites are poor, either because the person paying for the site doesn't know what they are doing and the so-called professionals simply do what they are asked to do, and churn out utter rubbish. Or the amature looks at other sites, reads one of the many terrible books, and uses one of the many poor tools (FrontPage...?). Result, most web sites are dire.

It's not actually hard to make a good site:

Start with good content. Text must be well written and make logical sense. Images must be crisp and go with the text. It's just like writing at school, good grammar, and spelling helps, sloppy poorly structured writing does not!
Mark up the text in a logical and standard compliant manner. This helps with long term maintainance, and any mechanical processing or templating. You also get predictable behaviour across browsers, and a certain degree of future proofing.
Design for usability and accessibility. Don't tag them on at the end! A useful design can be made beautiful, but it can be hard to do the reverse. Poor usability is a constant gripe of all web users, get it wrong and you could loose a lot of money... boo.com ....?
Finally add your eye-candy. A functional site that isn't pretty, isn't pretty, a pretty site that isn't functional isn't functional. Function is more important! A beautiful car that never starts is no use to anyone as a car, an ugly but reliable one has a use!

Get everything right and you have a fantastic site, get anything wrong and you are in trouble. The closer to the core the failure the worse the problem. Alas most marketing executives and amatures concentrate on the least important element - the look, while ignoring the more important construction and content.

Function may be more important to you

grantm on 2004-01-07T19:58:44

It may seem self-evident to any rational person that a non-functional site is no use. Corporate marketing and communications people frequently look at things somewhat differently however. In my web development career I encountered numerous clients who would rather have a very attractive but completely useless website that 'supported their brand identity', than a fully functional site with no eye-candy. Some were even prepared to spend thousands on flash animations to deliver the 'coming soon' or 'under construction' message.

Re:Function may be more important to you

ajt on 2004-01-07T22:08:19

I could not agree more. I work in marketing department, and it's a constant battle to put something fuctional out of the door, over something pretty. Thankfully I do a lot of useful Perl programming for internal projects too, so I care less about our web site than I use to, but I'm happy that our unit has a more functional web site than our parent company....