So, I cobbled together this here website using the graphic design greatness of Alex Fugazi and Ramrod (i.e., they designed the graphics and layout and I made it all work). For better or worse, I’ve been writing web sites since Netscape was the browser of choice, and Altavista was cooler than a Pets.com promotional t-shirt.
As a result I have some serious bad attitude about crappy-looking websites. While assembling my “Top 3” list of the world’s worst-looking web sites, I had to eliminate some obvious broad categories. For instance, pretty much anything off Geocities or MySpace, personal web sites in general, and more or less any porn site are not included. That being said, the world’s third worst-looking web site is…
As in, MySpace.com itself. In 2006, PC World ranked MySpace.com the world’s worst web site, but I was a little disappointed with their reasoning. It’s kind of a foregone conclusion that if you allow fourteen-year-old kids to write “web pages” using a crappy WYSIWYG editor, it’s going to be bad. Add on top of that retards posting 400 video comments and photo galleries, and you’ve got a browser-crashing nightmare. But the core problem is that MySpace totally sucks as a user experience, both in terms of look-and-feel, and usability.
Why the hell can’t the owners of one of the most valuable pieces of internet real estate hire some fucking web designers and usability experts? They’ve cheesed out lately trying to copy the greatness of Facebook on a feature-by-feature level, but it’s seriously like they don’t even use their own web site. Fuck you, Tom. As much as I hate Yahoo.com from a visual mess perspective, at least they’ve hired some real designers and written some impeccable UI components.
This one’s just kind of funny, and strictly regional to Dallas. I’ve seen some of the greatest music acts play at this place, from Guy Clark to Early Lines. This site has got it all! Low-res logo, spinning treble clefs and dancing music notes, a rainbow color scheme, and animated section dividers. The most ingenious part is probably the circa-1994 navigation consisting of “everything on one page”. The site has been the exact same for at least twelve years.
With an advertising budget that large, there obviously must be something wrong. Coupled with a really awkward and uncomfortable name, their site is designed with all the panache of a Nascar fanpage. Oh wow, I just looked at the site and they actually do sponsor Nascar (there’s even a related video embedded in the home page). So, if you want to feel a little sick, visit godaddy.com, wait for all the crap to load… and take it all in: the very definition of “visual vomit”.
Leave your suggestions in the comment section!
After all this negatively, I guess I should get together a list of the world’s most prettiest websites. Coming soon!
— Biafrah Winfrey
