Submitter’s comments: ColoradoPols.com recently ran an article entitled The Worst Campaign Website We’ve Ever Seen.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: As readers of this site know all too well, just when you think you’ve seen the worst the Internet has to offer, you discover something else. Yes, their suggested site is bad (actually, it’s been improved — you should see the screenshot in the article). However, the worst campaign site for this year (so far) is George Hutchins for U.S. Congress. It ended up as #2 on my “Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009.”

Kennedy for Colorado

Submitter’s comments: Stumbled on this site.  Gave up trying to figure out the Mystery Meat navigation (good luck clicking some of the links…) and stumbled on out of there.

I respectfully submit it for your ah… consideration.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It’s an art site, but we need to stop promoting these techniques. The good news is the “bubbles” don’t make bubble sounds (I remember hearing them on some site from the past).

Stop it already.

Studio Jan Melis

Submitter’s comments: Check it out. I think it’s way too busy.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, a lot of the problems are caused by the number and position of the ads. There is nothing wrong with ads, God love ‘em, but when there are so many and you can’t differentiate them from the rest of the page, you have a problem. Where’s the focal point of the page?

Pretty much everything on the site was created in Flash and that will be a problem for Firefox users with the NoScripts plugin or who have Javascript turned off. This is all you’ll see. It’s pretty scary and it makes the site pretty useless.

As this screenshot demonstrates, the site’s use of Flash, coupled with a lack of actual text, hurts this site in the area of Search Engine Optimization. There are only 43 words on the home page. I’ve got over 2,000 on mine.

Confusingly, the Pause button on the first Flash animation, doesn’t pause the video. It pauses the music, which is counterintuitive.

Sticks and Stones Outdoor Adventures Magazine

Sidney D. Torres IV

Submitter’s comments: This web site for New Orleans businessman Sidney Torres, who is about to star in a new reality show on TLC, is really hideous.  What’s really strange is he’s actively promoting it – his last few newsletters have linked it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Interestingly, there’s a unique problem when viewing the home page in Google Chrome. The page scrolls and there’s an extra huge white space. It seems like the page was eating up CPU cycles in IE 7, but then IE 7 on my machine is a piece of junk.

I guess Mr. Torres doesn’t want a home page, but a widget page. He’s put up a Myspace page, but not on Myspace. On the other hand, he is a trashman so the page may be perfect.

Sidney D. Torres IV

Fall Creek Sutlery

Submitter’s comments: This makes my head hurt. And the navigation? Where am I? Maybe this web site was new-looking during the Civil War.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s sad because I know there’s a market for these products. I realize we just had Groundhog Day, so why is the first thing I see on the site a “Merry Christmas” graphic? We have centered text, multicolored text, “Click Here” messages and a page that goes on forever. The only good thing about the site is that Norton thinks it’s safe.

Fall Creek Sutlery

Yahoo! Developer Network

Submitter’s comments: None.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: These folks are so totally unfreaking clear on the concept that they really need to be slapped.

If I remember correctly, “Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site” was one of the first articles on the topic that normals could almost understand. What’s really disturbing about this long, long article is that they’re using #666 for the text color and we all know that #666 is Satan’s CSS.

With #666 there’s not enough contrast between the text and the white background to easily read the article. This is especially bad because the article is so long. Oh, and lack of contrast is a problem because the W3C recommends a standard of 500 or greater for the color difference and a standard of 125 or greater for color brightness and #666 doesn’t cut it.

As I said in the Daily Sucker for 9-9-9, “The harder it is to read a web page the easier it becomes for your visitors to hit the BACK button and go to a site they can read. In order to read a web page, you need enough contrast between the text color and the background color.

“This isn’t rocket science. I’ll even  give you a simple guide that shows which shades of black to use for text on a white background.”

This horrible text color is EXTREMELY popular because it’s what the CoolKid designers use. I know that KidsToday don’t read, but there are still lots of people who do and this article on speeding up your web site can’t be put into pretty pictures and putting some of the concepts into an 8-minute video isn’t terribly helpful. Here are a lot more performance-related videos. Right now, Google is one of the main sources for information on the topic. Gosh. Even though the text is small, you can read it. What a concept!

Yahoo! Developer Network

The New England Fan Experience

Submitter’s comments: I’d like to select the Professional-Looking Web Site That Fits On My Screen Experience, but I couldn’t find it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I can basically repeat what I said about last Friday’s Daily Sucker:

It looks like Captain Saam The New England Fan Experience got their inspiration from:

Ugliest / Worst Web Pages of the Decade
Worst Web Page in the World
Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009
Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009
Worst Web Sites of 2008
Worst Web Sites of 2007
Worst Web Sites of 2006
Worst Web Sites of 2005
Over-the-top Web Sites

Captain Saam The Fan Site makes Mistake #5 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it.“ I call this type of design the “I haven’t taken my antipsychotics in a while school of web design.”

If they’re looking for inspiration, I’d pick the Gerard Butler Fan Convention. Man, there’s a lot wrong with this site, but it’s so much better than today’s sucker. Oh, I picked it at random from a Google search on the term [fan conventions]. Hey folks, try it.

The New England Fan Experience

Captain Saam’s Scuba School

Submitter’s comments: I’m a scuba diver and you gotta love this one. I want to submit to you a web site that I believe meets your criteria of a truly sucky web site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I have a great deal of respect for scuba divers. Michael Willis, the co-author of my first book, is a serious scuba diver — wait, that doesn’t make sense. You’re either a serious scuba diver or you’re a dead scuba diver, which is why I respect them. Unfortunately, I can’t respect today’s sucker because it looks like Captain Saam got his inspiration from:

Ugliest / Worst Web Pages of the Decade
Worst Web Page in the World
Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009
Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009
Worst Web Sites of 2008
Worst Web Sites of 2007
Worst Web Sites of 2006
Worst Web Sites of 2005
Over-the-top Web Sites

The Captain makes Mistake #5 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it.“ I call this type of design the “I haven’t taken my antipsychotics in a while school of web design.”

If he’s looking for inspiration, I’d try Scuba.com. It’s too busy, among other problems, but it’s a much better influence

The only way to keep Captain Saam from drowning is to redesign the site.

Captain Saam’s Scuba School

DPGraph

Submitter’s comments: I was searching the web for some assembly language information and I “crossed eyes” with this site. Since then I cannot type properly, I’ve grown a third ear and my retina is starting to decay <grin>.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Ironically, the site has found a good use for animated images — to show off their 3D graphing software. Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to use an animated GIF background. This takes the site from being sloppy to Over the Top.

All they have to do to improve the site and raise it to the level of mediocre is just remove the animated background. I just changed one HTML statement and made the site infinitely better. (In case they remove the background image, here’s a screen shot of the original page.)

DPGraph