The Daily Sucker

Submitter comments: Check out Lemon Bay High School for the worst example of a school web site on the planet. Talk about alienating your user base LOL.

Enjoy the useless splash, Mystery Meat Navigation, 3″ viewable content iframe and marvel at the .. well … what IS that thing, anyway? Some sort of robot antique water pump? Finally, mouseover the clock for a good giggle.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: KidsToday sigh. The most positive thing I can say is, “At least they didn’t use a Star Wars theme.”

Lemon Bay High School

Submitter comments: This web site is amazing! Check out all the dazzling colors and wonderful “marquees” they have to offer! With all these and their great services, they should have at least a few million visits by now!

By the looks of this site, I’m glad I get my technical support from forums.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This site is a good example of Mistake #5 from my Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it. It also looks like someone didn’t read Does My Web Site Suck? Checklist 1.

I’d like to point out another huge mistake — the site uses a visible counter. The site has been in existence for at least 3,051 days. If you divide the total number of visits (58,824 as of my visit) by 3,051, the site is getting a little over 19 visitors a day. I don’t think that’s worth bragging about. On the other hand, if you’re PostSecret, it’s OK to have a visible counter. Why? It’s averaging 108,079 visitors a day.

Internet Fixes

Submitter comments: I have a Webbies Award question. I was just curious about what you thought of this year’s winner for best Home Page.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Sites like this remind me of my favorite scene from the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Just as the bounty hunter had no choice but to come back, the site had no choice but to look this way. Life sucks when you have no choices. So do web sites.

The Los Angeles Film School

Submitter comments: So many bad jokes, so little time. But I know you always appreciate spinning Earth GIFs.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yes, I do appreciate them and so does my friend, GlobeGuy.

If you have a monitor with a screen larger than 1024 x 768, you’ll notice the ugly blue bar on the left repeats and that text goes over it. The logo is strange, but I don’t think you’d want a logo that was too literal.

AAA Pumping Service

Submitter comments: For the love of God, someone please shoot this web site and put it out of its misery. I think 1996 called and wants their FrontPage Express site back.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s difficult to have opinions about the truth. I don’t know if I hate the scanned advertisements or the unnecessary use of the flag more. Then we have the beveled logo and the navigation that’s pretty much lacking in contrast.

Old Iron Bridge Motorcycle Show

Submitter comments: This page summarizes everything you should not do in web design. Let’s just hope their Shrimp Lo Mein is better than their site, cuz I just ordered some.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The domain for this site is at Geocities and that doesn’t cut it in today’s world. Heck, it didn’t cut it years ago. If you want to look like a professional organization, get your own domain.

While the site doesn’t make every mistake, it makes enough. It took me a second to figure out what the animations were. I thought they were worms — not a good image for a Chinese restaurant. I’m assuming they’re really birds.

I’m not fond of the photo of the restaurant.

Super China Chinese Restaurant

In the previous post I mentioned that the Charles program discovered Microsoft’s home page is larger than reported by other services. Well, there are two other interesting facts.

1. Microsoft’s home page was running a 1×1 GIF image-based, ad tracking beacon from DoubleClick and DoubleClick competes with Microsoft’s ad offerings.
2. Microsoft, at least on the home page, is using WebTrends for their web analysis program — not Gastineau or whatever MS is calling their analytics offering.