Y do most adult sites have candybar wrapper look?

They, maybe 95% of 'em, have what looks to me to be the same candybar wrapper look to them – so cheap!

Anyone else notice the same?

Well, there’s your answer. If it looks cheap, it probably was, and adult sites are in the business to make money.

I think this better suited to IMHO.

Moved.

samclem GQ moderator

There are actually companies who specialise only in adult website design, and they tend to stick to the same formula. A large majority of the popularly known sites, often umbrella companies made up of many sites, use these web design businesses exclusively, thus a very samey look emerges.

Definitely not safe for work: http://www.xxxwebdesign.com/p_websites.html

Our own website was independently designed (by me, mostly) but some of our relatively innovative inclusions (innovative compared to other Adult sites anyway) have since been imitated, which is flattering.

What were the innovations, if you don’t mind my asking. I’d like to be able to recognize a “Guano” when surfing for porn.

[hijack]

Are these web design businesses responsible for the tendency to mislabel the wares? I’ve never figured that out… they do, in fact, have porn, it happens to be porn of one genre or type which presumably has a lot of appeal to folks who like that type; why put up description buttons and links all over the damn place describing it as porn of a different genre or type? The end result is that it’s very difficult to find what you like because everything is described as everything. Not to mention the popups, popunders, propogating windows, etc. I’ve also heard from people using Windows that these sites tend to be rife with spyware and malware installers. WTF?? If it’s as lucrative as folks say, why don’t they have a nice descriptive catalog and a straightforward charging structure? What is it about opening 100 godzillion unwanted windows that makes them rich? It’s not like they’re getting ad revenue, even, the spawned windows usually just go to yet more affiliated porn pages. So after about 2 minutes you’ve got more windows than you can manage, none of them related to the prurient interest that brought you to come looking. If I didn’t know better I’d say porn page design was all being done by the Ralph Reed Christian Coalition. It’s a massive disincentive for me at any rate!

[/hijack]

It’s a known fact that there are more porn sites on the web than adams in the universe.

It’s true: I’ve seen a lot of porn sites, but have never known anyone named Adam.

How are you finding those porn sites? If you’re starting with one page and following links from there, you may be trapped within a family of related sites (e.g. created and hosted by the same company).

I put ‘innovative’ in quotes because really these are kind of common sense.

We have:
Drop down menus that are clearly organised.
A sitemap that has a full list of all our models, described.
A categories area that list different special aspects of the models or shoots.
More search functions than you can shake a stick at.
The ability to explore the entire site as a guest, except for the full imagesets and videos.
A tour that provides a clear and exact description of what you get.
No popups, hidden links, or flashy advertising.

And a few more things that just make surfing the site easier instead of a minefield or maze.

Oh, I didn’t put innovative in quotes. I must’ve removed them and added the bracketed disclaimer.

I need sleep.