# Let's Talk About Terrible Websites **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 12, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848 "2015-03-12T18:48:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/21 "2015-03-14T04:38:45Z")
Having nothing to do with the content… Huffington Post’s website is slow to load, consistently making my computer freeze as the page loads. Some sort of bad coding. It seems to be a frequent complaint for several years now. [My favorite comment](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5254659) from one complainer: > [@](#): > > Obviously maintained by a drunken ADD webmaster on crystal meth. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/22 "2015-03-14T05:12:34Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > Having nothing to do with the content… Huffington Post’s website is slow to load, consistently making my computer freeze as the page loads. Some sort of bad coding. > > It seems to be a frequent complaint for several years now. This! I have the same experience with HuffPo! I am running an old version of Firefox on an old version of Linux on an old CPU box. I have a little performance monitor app running at all times, that displays a graph of CPU usage in a little box in the task bar. When I load a HuffPo page, everything screeches to a slow crawl and the CPU usage goes to 100% for many seconds at a time. Also, once the page is loaded, moving the mouse around over links causes something to happen that ties up the CPU also. I run my browser with JavaScript disabled, so it’s not a problem with the page being lousy with soggy JS crap. Anybody have any idea what these HuffPo pages are doing to cause that shit to happen? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/23 "2015-03-14T14:57:20Z")
I find that many U.S. Government sites are annoying and frustrating. Emphasis on spin rather than fact; budget details very unclear; when you finally find a link to the data it’s in an annoying format rather than simple tables. Of course there are exceptions. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and NASA are two examples of excellent informative websites. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/24 "2015-03-14T15:59:03Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > This! I have the same experience with HuffPo! I am running an old version of Firefox on an old version of Linux on an old CPU box. I have a little performance monitor app running at all times, that displays a graph of CPU usage in a little box in the task bar. When I load a HuffPo page, everything screeches to a slow crawl and the CPU usage goes to 100% for many seconds at a time. Also, once the page is loaded, moving the mouse around over links causes something to happen that ties up the CPU also. > > I run my browser with JavaScript disabled, so it’s not a problem with the page being lousy with soggy JS crap. > > Anybody have any idea what these HuffPo pages are doing to cause that shit to happen? I came into this thread to bitch about Huffpo. On top of all that above, Huffpo likes to do this weird ‘refresh and jumble’ thing. So, I’m on the home page reading the teasers, the page automatically refreshes, and when it comes back, that teaser I was reading is no longer there and has been replaced by another teaser! That, and when you play a video, it will pertain to the article well enough but after it’s done, it will continue to play other random videos that you have no fucking interest in. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/25 "2015-03-14T18:19:27Z")
There is also the Drudge Report. That is one ugly page (with no apparent backing content of its own). ---
**Author:** ![Lee\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/aeb1de/32.png) [@Lee\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lee_Q)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/26 "2015-03-14T18:32:05Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > I came into this thread to bitch about Huffpo. On top of all that above, Huffpo likes to do this weird ‘refresh and jumble’ thing. So, I’m on the home page reading the teasers, the page automatically refreshes, and when it comes back, that teaser I was reading is no longer there and has been replaced by another teaser! > > That, and when you play a video, it will pertain to the article well enough but after it’s done, it will continue to play other random videos that you have no fucking interest in. Salon does the same auto-refresh thing, and I hate it so much I stopped going there altogether. Stopped visiting Huffpo over a year ago for its various issues. For me the biggest peeve of all is any news site that has only a headline or a line or two of copy for a major story - and ONLY VIDEO for the bulk of the story. I hate, hate, hate it. Rarely would I **rather** watch a video clip of any news story. I blame the decline of newspapers for this, and the fact that the web has conditioned people to not want to read more than a line or two at a time. I can’t overemphasize how much I dislike this phenomenon. Guess I’m not the only one, as I think The Onion did a bit on “unwanted video at websites” at some point. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/27 "2015-03-15T04:22:55Z")
The San Jose Mercury News’s [website](http://mercurynews.com) has gotten so bad that I don’t even bother to read it anymore. Between various annoying ads sliding in from all sides, text and articles jumping all over the page before finally settling down, and the fact that after you view a certain number of pages in a month they gray out the page and cover it over with a “you gotta subscribe!” banner, I just gave up. They didn’t used to do any of this. Good job, SJ Merc! You’ve lost a reader. ---
**Author:** ![Chicago\_Faucet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chicago_faucet/32/13910_2.png) [@Chicago\_Faucet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicago_Faucet)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/28 "2015-03-15T05:43:20Z")
The official [Space Jam](http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm) website hasn’t been updated (or deleted, really) since 1996. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/29 "2015-03-15T06:46:26Z")
I hate these things in legit websites (e.g. not Time Cube type stuff): [ol] [li][I started a thread on this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=742967). The tl;dr: certain websites take keyboard presses, most annoyingly if you scroll with up/down, accidentally hitting right/left changes the story. Helpful link to a greasmonkey script in there.[/li][li]Local news websites that all look the same and go through great lengths to avoid telling you what state their in. They will have a tagline like “Serving the Greater Puckettsville Valley Area” when you just want to know what place spawned such a weird story (it’s Florida, isn’t it?). I just [trawled](http://www.timesnews.net/)_[Fark](http://www.wkyc.com/)to[find](http://www.mynews13.com/news.html)_[a](http://ktla.com/)_[few](http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/)_[examples](http://www.13newsnow.com/), but not picking on these ones specifically (there’s worse examples, just none handy). You’re left googling the cities mentioned or trying to find clues in the stories. Pretend you can’t see the URL for some of these or that the current story isn’t obvious.[/li][li]Not that I particularly want to comment, but what’s with all the linking to Facebook? Maybe the idea is to keep the trolls honest, but in my experience it just means a certain caliber of people will still post heinous shit when they use their real (or “real”) names.[/li][li]Videos everywhere, especially if it’s a video and a one sentence summary (often not giving any useful info). I tolerate videos if they have a story attached, or when some websites like CNN at least put an icon next to the videos[/li][li]Autoplay videos. Even worse are ones that you open in the background and play the next story automatically, so that when I finally open it I have to go back 22 pages to the original story. I saw one that took the cake a few months back. An autoplay video that a) had sound, b) was about 1.5" x 1", c) hidden in the story instead of front and center![/li][/ol] > [@HeyHomie](#): > > I’ll start: [My Insurance Company](https://www.anthem.com/health-insurance/home/overview) (Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Missouri). To pay your bill, you have to create a user ID and password, log in, then you’ll be directed to a third-party bill-pay website wherein you’ll need another user ID and password; all of this could be solved by having you put your policy number here, your major credit card number there, click and be done with it. I had United Health, and I think in order to get to sign up for dental I had to create 3 or 4 different logins. I also love when a website that would not be a big deal if it were compromised have password requirements much more onerous than most banks. > [@campp](#): > > Until recent years, the City of Phoenix utilities website could only be reached during business hours. Paying your bill at midnight? Forgetaboutit I can only guess that it sends your transaction straight to one of Joe Arpaio’s “guests” who transfers the info for $0.12/hour. He is totally not in jail for identity theft, we swear! ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/30 "2015-03-15T11:42:30Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > … it will continue to play other random videos that you have no fucking interest in. Agree. > [@Infovore](#): > > … annoying ads sliding in from all sides, text and articles jumping all over the page … There seems to be a resurgence of unclickable pop-overs and sticky banners. I thought frames were deprecated? (Or are these hi-tech CSS 9.9 pseudo-frames?) I was reminded of this thread just now when I clicked on a [fortune.com](http://fortune.com) story. I like to click on the scrollbar to read an article one screenful at a time, but the browser doesn’t account for the sticky-picks, pop-overs and slide-throughs, so I had to keep backing up to read the text I missed. When I click and read a news story I often linger at the site, checking the other news headlines. But some newswapers are so annoying I click X after reading. In the case of the [fortune.com](http://fortune.com) page just reading the one story was so tedious I clicked X before finishing it. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/31 "2015-03-15T12:04:18Z")
My biggest peeve has been mentioned: any website that hides contact information. I do computer support and I often need answers to technical issues. Most computer-oriented companies have replaced actual support for bulleting board, which may work with questions like “what is a right click?”, but is useless for anything of a technical nature. My usual result is: Me: “What is the solution for problem A? (Lays out the exact details about what’s happening and what I’ve done to fix it and why it failed)” Answer 1: Try this solution to a different problem that has one keyword in common with mine. Answer 2: Try this (sometime I’ve listed as already tried and failed). Answer 3: There is no Answer 3; the thread dies. So to get technical support – even if you paid for it – you need to call, and the only phone numbers on the web page are for sales, who can’t help you. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/32 "2015-03-15T13:07:19Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > My biggest complaint (not that it is necessarily the worst thing ever, but perhaps the most widespread) is lack of a phone number on a business web site. If you want my business, give me a goddamned phone number! If you want my business, but only want it through email or, worse, through a form on your website, you must not want my business all that much. And for those of us who often are in that strange place called “abroad”, phone numbers that can be used from abroad, and do put mail info. In other words, and in order to make it easier for people to reach you, have multiple ways in which you can be reached. Said maill will be more likely to reach you if it’s spelled correctly. Promise. If you sell different product lines, you may wish to consider allowing the same payment methods inasmuch as possible. I can see why prepaid phone and internet will not have a subscription option - it would be a contradiction; but why make it possible to prepay the internet connection by credit card, but not the phone? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2015, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/33 "2015-03-15T13:15:03Z")
Apparently many of the web forms from the Spanish government are made by the same firm. Their website designers have a real big monitor or something. You know, in a form consisting of a two-line explanation (in tiny print) and five fields to be filled up, the buttons marked submit, save and cancel, by the way with no mouseover info, should not be so far down I need to scroll down when I’m in a 15" monitor. Then there are those which have versions in several languages and, when you click on a different language from any of the individual pages, take you to the “home” for that particular language rather than to that same page in the desired language. I can somewhat understand it when the different language versions aren’t matched, but - why do that when they are? ETA: damn, nice Gaudere in that maillllllll… ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/34 "2015-03-16T00:50:54Z")
While not comically ugly on the surface, the [Magic: The Gathering](http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles) website is inexplicably baffling to actually navigate around. It basically has 3 or 4 new articles per day, most of which are weekly columns. Plus there should be coverage of big tournaments, plus links to things like card databases. How hard is it to make that clean and well organized? Too darn hard, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![trapezoidal\_jellyfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6f9a4e/32.png) [@trapezoidal\_jellyfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trapezoidal_jellyfish)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/35 "2015-03-16T05:21:54Z")
Can I really be the first to post about [the world’s worst website ever](http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com)? ---
**Author:** ![Annoying\_Buzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Annoying\_Buzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annoying_Buzz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2015, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/36 "2015-03-16T23:47:17Z")
Shopping at Rakuten: :click product link: 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 📜 “Oh, so that’s what the product actually looks like. What varieties are available?” 🔙 :click next product link: 📜 ---
**Author:** ![Leonard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a6a055/32.png) [@Leonard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leonard)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/37 "2015-03-17T00:11:10Z")
A company I do work for does their billing through [cortex.net](http://cortex.net). They have this web app where you submit invoices. It has these 2 nestled scroll windows that drive me nuts every time. The outer window has to be scrolled to the correct spot to reveal the scroll bar to move the inner window, and the width of the inner window is wider than the outer window. Sometimes you have to scroll the outer window to get to the the rest of the inner scroll bar to scroll it the rest of the way over. Somebody should get punched. Unfortunately I don’t think you can see it without having an account. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/38 "2015-03-17T07:38:38Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Twenty years of bad websites: > [www.websitesthatsuck.com](http://www.websitesthatsuck.com) > > with the motto “learn good web design by looking at bad design” Ironically, that website sucks. The top navigation is unusable. Go ahead, try to navigate to the FAQ. I dare you. It’s a mouse-over event that starts to disappear the moment your cursor leaves the button boundary. Unless you’ve got a mouse and the reflexes of a teenage FPS addict, you’re not going to make it all the way over to the left side of the page and click before it disappears on the first try. I’m on a laptop with a trackpad, and while I’ve got good reflexes, the precision and timing needed to actually hit that target with the equipment I’ve got is challenging. It took me 6–7 tries to get it. The mobile version of the site, activated when you shrink it down enough (he did manage to implement some responsive design elements) has a navigation burger and dropdown menu that actually makes it better than the full-size version. The top navigation partially violates [7. Navigational Failure](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html#7), and features a bit of [8. Mystery Meat Navigation](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html#8) on his own list of biggest mistakes. [Some pages](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/) have different designs. There’s no unified theme. Different styles of dropdown menus implemented by two different versions of scripts. (The old black one works better since it has a dropdown menu right under the navigation element and doesn’t make you race to click.) Obviously doesn’t know much about “newfangled” design techniques like CSS (first proposed in 1994) since most of this could be fixed with a good redesign. And oh my gods, the clutter. Is there any real organization on [the main page](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/index.html)? It goes roughly in reverse chronological order from **Web Pages That Suck Presents The 20 Worst Websites of 2014** to **The 12 Worst Over-The-Top Websites of 2014** , but throws in **The Daily Sucker - Current Examples of Bad Web Design** part of the way down, and **The Concept Behind Web Pages That Suck** is all the way at the bottom. The layout is … something else. The graphics are all randomly-sized, and the nearly-invisible (but not quite) inter-article division outline is painful to look at, as is the grid of badges in the sidebar. [Two](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-checklist-part-one.html) [different](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-checklist-part-two.html) checklists, with different layout and contents. Combine them! Edit them! For the love of [cute Cthluhu](http://machall.com/view.php?date=2003-03-23), please, please edit them. Just don’t [use tables for layout](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/top-30-web-design-mistakes.html) ever again. Oh, and if you force links to load in a new page at random, like you did for the [FAQ link here](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-intro.html), I will cut you. Oh, and I found that the link in the sidebar that reads [Examples of Good Web Design](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/links-to-articles-you-should-read.html#p7EPMc12_1) doesn’t actually link to any examples of good web design. On-click, it displays a menu with two links: one to online coding courses, and one to e-books about web design. On those pages there’s little to no curation. It’s like, “Here’s a list of about 100 articles, with some basic headings for half-assed guidance. Have fun!” ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2015, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848/39 "2015-03-17T12:36:20Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Ironically, that website sucks. Apparently, that’s intentional. If you had managed to get to the FAQ (takes some doing, as you say), you would find that one of the Q’s is, in fact, “Why does your site suck?” Part of the answer: [QUOTE=webpagesthatsuck] I like for the look of the site to suck in a mediocre rather than blazingly bad way because most sites suck in a mediocre way. [/QUOTE] Elsewhere, he says: [QUOTE=webpagesthatsuck] It always amazes me that people come to WPTS expecting to see me use “good” design on this site. [/QUOTE] Apparently it’s some sort of meta thing. Yeah, I don’t get it either, but I guess we’re not hip enough. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-terrible-websites/714848.md?page=1)