Worst Web Sites 2007

If a commercial web site sucks, it generally only affects the employees and stockholders of the company. Hopefully, they have the qualifications to go out and find another job if their company fails.

When a nonprofit web site sucks, the organization's clients get hurt — and they already are in a vulnerable state or they wouldn't be clients. There's more at stake with a nonprofit web site and there's more responsibility to "get it right."

Obviously some clients of nonprofit organizations, like universities, don't get hurt in the same way as a homeless shelter's clients would get hurt. Still, a poorly designed web site tarnishes the luster of an organization.

For examples of other nonprofit and not-for-profit web sites that suck, also read: The 10 Worst Nonprofit Web Sites of 2007

#20. Celibacy, Meditation, and Enlightenment — Go to Celibacy

If you are going to have a site this controversial, at least employ decent web design.

I thought this was a Buddhist-based blasphemy, but it turns out the top section changes religions. I'm not sure how often, perhaps daily. Right now, it looks Christian.

Read the commentary.

#19. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley — Go to UC Berkeley

I'll be surprised if this site hasn't been offered for your consideration previously! It is, as you will see, a miraculous collection of unreadable text, mysterious images, hidden navigation and questionable functionality; still worse, a large sum of money was paid to create this mess.

Although we can say that is passes cursory accessibility tests for the differently-abled. It may be the first web site in history where blindness actually enhances the user experience

Read the commentary.

#18. Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania — Go to Nanty Glo, PA

Vincent, have I got a Daily Sucker for you! I just found a web site whose background reminds me of Frankie Ford’s web site, which was a Daily Sucker from sometime in the fall of 2006 — remember that one? Well, just one look at the city of Nanty Glo, PA’s web site will make it feel like deja vu as far as backgrounds go, and that’s just the beginning of this site’s suckiness.

Read the commentary

#17. Brown University Research — Go to Brown University Research

Brown, Brown, Brown. Such a prestigious school; such sucky web design. The university has been featured a couple of times (2005 and 2006) — not because I have a grudge against them (I don't) but because their designers keep coming up with really bad ideas and alumni keep sending them to me.

I like to think I'm a clever guy, but I can't come up with such a cleverly stupid idea for navigation as this page demonstrates. Seriously, I'm impressed.

#16. Pinelands Regional School District — Go to site

Make sure your sound is turned down.

Submitter's comments: hello i go to pinelands regional school district and ive always had problems finding things on there site and the site map is horrible lol guess google isnt getting my school indexed properly for a while

anyway here is my school's home page

the intro page is really funny too lol

Vincent Flanders' comments: Sigh. School web sites are often poorly designed and you don't have to go too far to find a sucky example. You have to hate the unnecessary Splash page on this site.

Other comments #1: Vincent, I believe you about the "make sure your sound is turned down" statement. Right now, at the same time, I'm also listening to Sacred Music Preserved's net radio feed (www.sacred-music.org) and I could hear the roar over that, big-time!

Pinelands Regional School District

#15. Yakima County Clerk — Go to the Yakima County Clerk

Dear Designers: You don't have to be afraid of using Contrast on your sites.

Submitter's comments: Too many buttons all over the place, multiple fonts and colors, color contrast issues in many places. Most of the links take you to PDFs.

There is no Contact Us link, which is a particular pet peeve of mine. I guess I shouldn't expect much more from a government web site.

Vincent's comments: As was mentioned, this site has problems with contrast — the yellow (#ffcc00) text on the gray (#838383) background doesn't offer enough contrast to be easily read. An even worse example is the title "Yakima County Clerk." It's really hard to read and makes me believe that web sites are being designed by birds — eagles to be exact. Their sharp eyesight is the only explanation.

You have to love the buttons on the right side. Looks like someone went to an online button maker and didn't specify the width.

Not marking PDFs (and other non-HTML documents) is one of my pet peeves, although Firefox has a great extension that warns you if you click on a link that will load a PDF. Speaking of Firefox extensions, here's a list of 200 Firefox extensions that save time and effort and answer the question, "I want a Firefox extension that will let me..." Oh. And the site also has "The Ultimate Web Developer List."

Yakima County Clerk

#14. El Paso Water Utilities — Go to El Paso Water Utilities

This may be one of the most instructional reviews you'll read.

The comments were valid when they were written.

Read the commentary.

#13. Covington Business Association — Go to Covington Business Association

Submitter’s comments: This is the web site for my home town of Covington, Indiana. It’s so bad that I'm going to make a donation to the town in support of a better web site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Personally, I think you should give your money to some nonprofit who can do some good. Doesn't anybody understand the concept of visual contrast? I ran the home page through AccessColor and received the following results:

Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 15.22% of the total text.

Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 18.84% of the total the text.

We also have multi-colored divider bars, centered and flush-left text, multi-colored text, and they've put the date the site was last edited (March 3, 2006). Oh, and the TITLE tag for the home page is “Home,” which doesn't help the search engines index the site.

Other comments: OK the marquees going in the opposite directions make my eyes cross. Somebody please tell them marquees are so Front Page 97. OOOPS! My bad. This sucker was make with Front Page 4.0. The map on the home page should be a clickable thumbnail, it's useless as it stands, at least at any resolution over 800x600. And what's with all the different colored text? Pick a color scheme and stick to it, already.

Covington Business Association

#12. Town of Saugerties Police Dept. — Go to Saugerties Police Dept.

xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"

That pretty much says it all.... I could stop there but I found some other gems when viewed in IE.

Most pages have a animated gif (Check out the K-9 page for a laugh)
Click on "Crime tips" and your email client starts up with "Got Crime?" as the subject.
The "Department News" thingie is simply strange.
Right Click, "Function Disabled!"
Charming use of color of course.

Read the commentary.

11. MIT Architecture — Go to MIT Architecture

WTF is it with Architecture web sites?

Submitter's comments: Pretty bad with the graphical links — some serious Mystery Meat Navigation combined with a load time for each graphic when you mouse over a link.

Vincent's comments: WTF is it with Architecture web sites? I used to have a great deal of respect for the industry, but I think...I don't know what I think other than these people are one floor short of a complete building.

The sub-pages appear to be OK, except that the navigation fails the contrast test:

Foreground:#FFFFFF Background:#BABABA

Fail (The contrast ratio is: 1.91)

Text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 5:1 for level 2 conformance to guideline 1.4,and text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 10:1 for level 3 conformance to guideline 1.4.

Notice that they don't use MMN on the sub-pages. Hmm. This implies that either it's wrong to use MMN on the first page or their visitors are too stupid to have memorized the links on the front page to use them on the sub-pages.

MIT Architecture