Worthy of an Upgrade
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Every once in a while, you come across a site that just screams “smear me!” I’ve been looking, and I finally found one that deserves a good bashing. First of all, let me note that this site was actually suggested to me by someone I work with.
The site in question is called showdown in sanangelo and is set up for drag boat racing in San Angelo, TX. The content is kept up to date, but I question whether the designer is stuck in 1995. There is a relatively small (for the size of the page) graphic in the background that repeats in a horrible manner. There is a side menu that looks like someone’s failed attempt at making the site look reputable. The color scheme isn’t too bad either.
Do you remember on the Simpsons, when Homer got his first computer and became addicted to the internet? Do you remember what his first website looked like? Just a load of crap all over with no apparent organization. When I see this site, I can’t help but think of Homer’s. Given, it doesn’t have a dancing Jesus, but it’s pretty bad.
So far, this has just been a bit of a rant, I know, so let’s get in to the details of what I do and don’t like about the site. Let’s start with what I like. The color scheme isn’t so bad and the information is current. Now for the bad…
My first complaint is with these people being seemingly so concerned about everything lining up down the middle of the page, the Title bar attached to the menu doesn’t even extend across the single columna of page content.
The background sucks! It’s a sky-view picture of a lake with boats racing on it… not that you can make out the boats, this thing was taken from a plane pretty high up. And, like I said, it repeats over and over in a migraine-inducing anti-pattern. Secondly, all the content is straight down the middle of the page in a single column. Now, in today’s world, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but this column is narrow and LONG. If I were to print this page it would likely take five pages to get all the crap piled up in this column. There’s not actually anything wrong with the content itself, just how it’s arranged. In this narrow column, not a single item is beside another. Even the narrow sponsor logos that could likely fit three across in this narrow column are stacked on top of each other. To top everything off, there’s music. Yes, I said it… music. Oh, and don’t forget the hit counter at the bottom of the page
I actually had to double check that this wasn’t someone’s crappy myspace page. The way it is set up, it leads me to believe that is exactly where the designer obtained their “web design” experience. There’s even a flicker photo album at the bottom. The only thing missing is an over-inflated friends list and a section displaying all the comments. That’s not to say that comments don’t exist. This guy has a guest book, and I suppose a lot of sites do, but if you follow the menu to go to his guest book, you are presented with a very black and white, no creativity used, page where you can enter your info and comment.
I think the worst part of the site is what you get when you click the ‘Links’ menu item. Go there, try it… you get a black background with white and nasty bright blue text. Wait, what? Where’s the menu or link to go back to the main page you ask? Well, none of his interior pages have it. Your restricted to the browser’s back button.
There is a photo gallery with a good selection of photos from various events, but once again, with all the real estate offered, they have chosen to arrange the small thumbnails in a VERTICAL column. Again, no home button. Argh!
All-in-all, I give this site a ‘D’. There has to be worse out there and I will find it, but this is pretty bad. My advice, someone needs to tell these guys to either find someone with a little more creativity to design their site or pay someone to do it for them. Paying to have their site build wouldn’t cost more than $600-$700 and it would be a very wise investment.
