Web Pages That Suck selected my website.

The BBQ Pit
1

I had a feeling my website (www.1728.com) would be chosen sooner or later.
Anyway, go to this link:
Daily Sucker - Current examples of bad web design from Web Pages That Suck - Learn good web design by looking at bad web design

and look for Daily Sucker #2 for Monday, September 12, 2005

There’s a comments link but if you can’t find it here it is:
http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=101249&p=1327&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webpagesthatsuck.com%2Fdailysucker%2F2005%2F09%2F12.html%23a1327

you’ll see their erudite exegeses.

Well, my plan might be just to E-Mail the webmaster and tell him it’s so easy to be a critic and that
• My site will get well over 3 million hits for 2005.
• Among others, Tufts University Medical School and McGill College link to me.
• The guy who started Federal Express, submitted his idea for an express freight company when he was a business student in college. His professor gave him a ‘C’. So much for critics !!!
•For someone who puts their own ugly “puss” on the front page of their website, they have a lot of arrogance to say anybody else’s website sucks.

You think I’m going overboard about this? Believe it or not, I don’t really care too much about what this dipshit says about me. (ahem THREE MILLION Fucking hits :smiley: )

Any suggestions about responding to these fuckheads? (Something like - hey guys save your breath - you’ll need it to inflate your date !!!)

(and did I mention my website will get at least 3 million hits this year ??? :smiley: )

2

“Classic Suck” is so much better than “New Suck” in my opinion.

Don’t let it worry you.

3

To be fair, it does suck… really bad. Just because people go there doesn’t mean they prefer that design. Sometimes, function trumps form but form & function would still be better.

4

I have to laugh. In my opinion Web Pages That Suck has a pretty sucky front page themselves. For one thing, it fails to adujst to my chosen monitor resolution, so I have to scroll over the read the right side of the page. And what’s whith that useless blue bar down the left side? And, of course “Ads by Google” at the top is pure class. :rolleyes: The photograph of the author on the top banner breaks a cardinal rule of photography–cropping off the top of the head or the bottom of the face. And it does BOTH.

5

You want suck?

From that same review site - WARNING - POSSIBLE BLINDNESS WILL OCCUR!!!

6

Also, Mr. Sucker, I hope National Lampoon sues you for the “The Dog Gets It” ad.

7

Well, but your front page is…how shall we say…not very subtle. In fact, it kind of hurt my eyes. Okay, it really hurt my eyes. But at least it didn’t have a stupid ad strip at the top (which is as far as I got with Webpages that Suck).

8

I’m sorry Wolf_Meister, but frankly… your website does not have a good design. I probably could not do any better, at least without blatantly stealing a design from another site, but I’m sorry, it’s not good. Getting a lot of hits only means it’s a useful or interesting site, which is totally distinct from design.

Don’t take it personally, it’s just a web site. In fact, it’s not even that, it’s just the appearance of a web site. Try to take the criticism as constructive, and if you care to improve your design, maybe take note of what these folks are saying. Or if you don’t care about design, ignore 'em.

9

I just want to point out that Webpages that Suck deliberately uses sucky webdesign. It’s all part of his master plan to teach people good web design by showcasing bad design. (or at least it was a year ago when I looked the website over really well).

Having said that, at some level, if you are happy with your design, despite its flaws (some of which may well be in the eye of the beholder) enjoy the free publicity. But . . . if you had a feeling that your website would be chosen sooner or later- why didn’t you do something about it?

10

Sorry, I have to agree. Good content, ugly presentation.

If it were mine, I’d:

Lose the background tile – immediately! Not only ugly, but ugly in a very prehistory-of-the-internet kind of way.

Ditch those exclamation marks!! You don’t need them, really!! You don’t post like this!! Why should your web-page shout at us!!?

Reapproach the font settings. Too big and too colourful. It hurts.

Tone down the borders on your tables, dude. If you want to set them apart, adjust the colour or background for them. Or don’t! But those big borders are as ugly as sin.

Sorry to be harsh. You’ve got great content, though!

11

Listen, my employer’s website made Web Pages That Suck, too. The Web Page isn’t great, I must admit, but the employer itself ROCKS! I have often alluded to where I work on SDMB, but I won’t spell it out. Let’s just say it’s considered among the finest of its kind - even in the field of, um, design - and it just has a sucky website is all.

12

This whole Pit thread was just a ploy by you to get more hits on your site.

You bastard!

13

FWIW, I have actually used your website before. I got it in a search for some caculator I was hunting at the time. I’m trying to remember what I was trying to calculate. Whatever it was, your website helped me out.

I’m of the “don’t give a flaming rat’s ass what it looks like, it worked for me” camp.

14

FWIW, the guy did acknowledge your site had “really good content” - meaning he was criticizing your site design and not the site itself. And I’m going to have to agree with the others when they say the design is not exactly stellar. However, if that doesn’t bother you, or the other people who obviously find the site useful, then who cares some random guy says? :slight_smile:

15

Hmm. When an author responds in public to a negative review, it’s often referred to as the ABM - Author’s Big Mistake. (See, for example, Anne Rice … )

Why? Because it’s terribly easy to come off as petulant, hypersensitive, and generally whiny when you’re doing it.

I have to say (as someone who’s built the odd webpage in his time; and yes, I know my personal site’s rubbish) some of the criticisms of your design seem, to me, to be legitimate. Now, there are a number of ways you could respond to this, for example:

1 - Say nothing; ignore them; why bother? Life’s too short.

2 - Say “Hmm, I guess they might have a point about the way the site looks, maybe I should get round to improving the look-and-feel a bit.”

3 - Say “Hmm, maybe they’ve got a point, but it’s the functionality that’s important, I don’t really want to invest any effort in a redesign of the HTML.”

4 - Say “These things are subjective; I’m happy with the design, and at least the functionality, which is the important bit, works just fine.”

5 - Say “Oh, yeah? Well, my site gets millions of hits, so whadda you know, huh, you big loser? And your site’s ugly! And I bet you smell of wee!”

You seem to be coming too close to option 5, there. Just my opinion.

16

Thanks everyone for the words of praise and encouragement.

Actually, the reason I was expecting my webpage to make their list was that they can pick just about any website and find fault with it. Then again, did anyone ever build a statue to honor a critic ? :smiley:

My favorite example of dealing with criticism occurred in a hockey game in the early 1970’s played between the Boston Bruins against the Flyers in Philadelphia. The crowd was being their usual abusive selves and with just a few minutes left, the Bruins’ Bobby Orr (the greatest player of his time), was getting thrown out of the game by the referee. This seriously increased the crowd’s booing particularly at Mr Orr as he was exiting the rink. Bobby just smiled, looked at the crowd and politely pointed at the scoreboard - Bruins 6 Flyers 2. :smiley:

Yes, I think it was Frank Sinatra who said “Success is the best revenge” !!

17

Dude, your website should be banned just for having that ugly stucco-textured background. It is aesthetically offensive, but nowhere near among the worst web sites I’ve seen. At least you don’t have animated GIFs and random MIDI files in the background. And the information is presented in an easily accessible manner. Unlike the site Mr. Blue Sky linked to. Now that’s truly stupid and sucky.

I’d give you a 3/10 for design.

18

Yes. But the point is about the design. Your design is not very good. It may accomplish what it needs to accomplish, but it can be done in a much better, cleaner, manner. I mean, you cannot seriously and critically look at your web page and say it suffers from good design. It simply doesn’t. While you may get 3 million hits, that still doesn’t counter the fundamental point that it’s not well designed.

19

wolf_meister, I’ve been using your calculators for years, without ever knowing you were a Doper. I like them a lot. They’re useful and they’ve saved me some time.

Your design, though, really does suck. Your mailboxes look like they were designed for EGA resolution.

But here’s the important part: So what if the design is old school? I go to your site because I want a fast conversion, or because I need to use a specialty calculator, not because I want a lesson in web design.

So the hell with Web Pages That Suck.

20

Hm, I think that is just an excuse on his part. What good websites has he done? He doesn’t seem to have any design background or study, aside from some basic UI. I have the old “Webpages that suck” and his "fixing of a site was decidedly plebian; like I’d expect from a $20/hr html hack. I really think he can’t do much better.

wolf_meister, your site is not very good design. However, it doesn’t get in the way of the info, which is more important on a site like yours. Look at UI guru Neilsen’s www.useit.com site; pretty much just as basic as yours (although I think he goes too far off the scale in terms of usuabilty at the expense of visual interest and good layout). Tone the colors way down, get rid of the textured background, nip up the extra space and you’ll have a nice little site. A top nav for the main sections and a home link and it’s even better–that’s a major flaw in your site now, you have to use the back button to navigate or else that link on the bottom that you have to scroll to. But now, eh, yeah, it’s kind of My First 1995 Website. :slight_smile: Tidy it up and get even more hits!