Worst Web Sites of 2008 — Contenders #11-20

I love great web design. The designers who create great web sites know that you have to combine content and design in such a way that a web site flows seamlessly from page to page. The visitor never has to ask, "What do I do now?"

Unfortunately, this second group of candidates for the Worst Web Site Featured on Web Pages That Suck during 2008 makes you think, "What the heck is going on?" and it features candidates #11-20. These candidates were Daily Suckers from January through June.

Of course, we're a long way from 2008 so all/most/some of the sites have been fixed.

11. Tracy's Karate

Tracy's Karate sucks

It's a YAITS (Yet Another Industry That Sucks) — Martial Arts web sites. A blast from the past is Seneca Tae Kwon Do.

It's a mess. Ditch the site and redesign it.

Vincent Flanders' comments: This site is an archetypically bad martial arts site. You have to love the "put everything on one page" mentality. Because there is so much text, I didn't notice the "Click here for a simple navigation page" link. Duh. Why isn't this the home page and the current home page a link called, "Click here for a stupidly complex non-navigational page."

The Splash/Home page, with the TITLE tag "Home," enjoys multiple text sizes, multiple text colors, and centered text. The "real" home page likes color. Lots and lots of color. Some of the subpages (FAQ) are missing images.

Go to Tracy's Karate

12. Stupid Fun Club

Stupid fun club sucks

I really don't know what to say, other than it looks like we have another contender for Worst Web Site of 2008. It's a monumental waste of time.

Submitter's comments: I can't tell if there is even anything worthwhile on the site. The show "Modern Marvels" on History Channel was showing these guys developing all kinds of fascinating gadgets. Their group is called "Stupid Fun Club", in Berkeley, CA. Google provides a physical address and phone, so I may call them to ge info... 'cuz the web site is useless!

Go to Stupid Fun Club

13. Petrosains

Petrosains sucks

Here is another example of Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN).

Vincent Flanders' comments: And it's a really good example, too. My first problem is the message under the "HOW TO NAVIGATE" heading that says, "Click anywhere. Drag and Release." OK. That's what I do and guess what? Nothing happens. I look around and finally see the {ENTER} button. I click, drag, and release and it just moves planets around. I mouse over some of the planets and get scientific trivia. Other planets, are incredibly bizarre MMN and open up other pages like "Contact."

I'm sure somebody likes it, but it's a waste of time.

14. Think About It

Vincent Flanders' comments: Thoughtscape? More like a CrapScape. The voice on the FlashSplash page says:

Question It
Ponder It
Dare It
Test It
Flip It
Flop It
Think About It

I'd like to add, "Leave It."

Submitter's comments: I have never submitted a suggestion as the worst web site in the world before, and if you think it just belongs on the Daily Sucker, be my guest. But I don't know when I have seen a worse site by a serious big-time corporation than Hyundai's thinkaboutit.com. This site is supposed to sell you on Hyundai itself, not any of its vehicles in particular.

Already you can imagine the potential. This high-minded pretentious nonsense belongs in a European art house, not in a commercial web site.

I could not list all the things wrong because I only looked at part of the site, but you could look all day and keep finding things to hate.

But don't because this site would slow down a mainframe! I'll just start with the name--it tells you nothing about the site, but inside there is a caption that calls the site a "thoughtscape." It all goes downhill from there.

Other comments #1: That's funny. I actually have 2 GB of RAM and a fast connection. It still ran rather choppy when it started flying through the immense 3D world of letters.

I remember when Windows 95 first came out, it had that screen saver called Maze which would move systematically through a Doom-looking maze. When bored, I would marvel at the amazing 3d feet of my screen saver.

In 1995, the first 3d movie Toy Story came out, too, and it was pretty amazing.

Sadly for Hyundai, it's been over a decade and I've adjusted to these 3d wonders. They aren't so amazing that I would put up with mindless floating just to discover the general purpose and direction of a car company.

Other comments #2: People who can afford to pay for the computer/bandwidth that this site seems to require are not likely to buy a Hyundai, I would think.

Other comments #3: Wow....that sucks so hard it could suck the black hole of death into it. Definite all time suck award candidate.

Other comments #4: A good rule of thumb to follow is, if a Flash animation can't play without being choppy, it shouldn't even see the light of day -- like this site, because it took me a good 3 or 4 minutes to download, even on a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection, 512 MB of RAM, a 2.26-GHz Intel CPU running Ubuntu Linux. NO ONE is gonna be impressed by this piece of fecal matter, because I don't think you can even build a computer fast enough to play this animation without it being choppy!

Think About It

15. Teacher Express

Teacher express used to suck but it is dead now

What can one say about this one? And we wonder why our children are confused.

Vincent Flanders' comments: Actually, I don't wonder. I've used this site before — probably a long, long time ago — because I don't seem to have a record of it other than I've used it in my speeches.

I've heard of web designers being <DIV> happy and <SPAN> happy, but this site is a perfect example of being link happy. Or link crazy.

On the other hand, the copyright date is 2002. As I've always said, if you use dates, keep the dates updated. If I see an article has a date of 2003, I'm going to ignore it — no matter how good it is or how relevant. It's old and old is a sin on the internet.

Well, it's dead.

Go to Teacher Express

16. daxo

OK, This is annoying, I was looking for information on the the FF Dax font and got this lovely piece of (pejorative term deleted) web site, which apparently belongs to the creator of the font.

Also note the descriptive page titles.

Vincent Flanders' comments: The home page is cleverly called "start" and the other pages are illuminatingly entitled "page9," "page4," etc. Very helpful.

I want you to imagine the following scene:

A seagull lands on a beach, picks up a grain of sand, and then flies away. The bird repeats these actions once every million years. By the time the seagull has emptied the beach of the sand, you still haven't figured out what the hell is going on with this web site.

The only thing worse than being bored by a web site is being bored by an art-fart web site like this one.

Go to daxo

17. Land Between the Lakes

There is not much that's very redeeming at all about this site. And the sideways navigation comes out looking VERY stupid, any which way you slice it. I have been to the Land Between the Lakes, and it's a very nice place to visit, but this site looks like a real train wreck, and obviously does NOT help promote tourism in that part of western Kentucky.

Tacky...very tacky.

Submitter comments: This is seriously bad.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, that's the 4 word version of my review.

We really don't need the FlashSplash page. The "real" home page has, for some reason known but to God, sideways navigation. Fortunately, when you mouse over a link, the new menu isn't sideways. When I clicked on the "Travel Flash" button, I was taken to a subpage that didn't have a link to the home page.

On the Explore and Learn page, there are two links at the bottom-left of the page that are actually PDF files. Unmarked PDF files. For some strange reason, the home page link is on the right-hand side of the top logo. Oh, and we have contrast issues.

It's very strange.

Other comments #1: The navigation is not only sideways but upside down to my way of thinking. It should face to the right, not the left. And yes, someone really likes to oversaturate colors. Is it artsy-fartsy or is it crap? I think it's artsy-fartsy crap.

Other comments #2: It's a government web site. The slide show was so fast I thought my processor was on amphetamines. I know where the park is because I found the teeny little information area. I've seen worse navigation on ....the Australian government radio and television site. Why don't these type sites ever use Google Earth placemarks. Google earth maps are seldom used anymore unless the aerial photo is crappy. I make extensive use of Google Earth Placemarks and not one person ever complained of getting lost.

Other comments #3: Love the surveymonkey survey that popped up. I answered this site.

My main question when i went to this site is...WHERE IS LBL???? After visiting 4 pages, i STILL don't know. Is it implied that if you are visiting then you know where the land is that is between the lakes?? Because there are many areas that would fit the bill.

Go to Land Between the Lakes

18. American Tours

Ick. I would never have seen the navigation if I hadn't been on this site. Just awfully done. Awful. Awful. Plus staring at the bus looking for navigation made me carsick. Nothing says "LET'S GO FOR A RIDE" like a speeding bus with its door open.

Vincent Flanders' comments: If you believe the TITLE tag, the name of the site is “Main.” When I looked at the page, I thought it was a placeholder page because there’s no navigation and the text just thanks you for visiting. I realized I was looking at a Flash page and moused over the content. Sure enough I got the infamous “Click to activate and use this control” message. (Sometime soon, Microsoft will have a workaround so you don’t have to click to activate the Flash plugin.)

I clicked and nothing happened. Then I moused over the bus and discovered the Mystery Meat Navigation. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Visitors to this landing page are going to be confused because they’re going to think there’s no content other than a “Thank You” note and they’re going to leave. If they do figure out how to turn on the Flash, they may still miss the Mystery Meat. The most important rule in web design is “Don’t do anything that gets in the way of the user.” Everything on this page gets in the way.

Am I the only one who’s tired of seeing bald eagles on logos when companies have the word “American” in their name? You need to hurry up and look at the huge typo on the the Pictures page. It says “52 Passanger Coach.”

Go to American Tours

19. Kongkaffe

I've stopped by this site a couple of times. He´s not that bad when it comes to programming and interface for that matter. But the look is terrible.

I actually tried to do a little research on the guy, and it turns out he´s serious about this.

Anyway, check it out.

Vincent Flanders' comments: You have to love the title of the home page "Forsidden," which translates to "front page." Duh. This is really helpful for the search engines when they come by to index your site

I think the URL — kongkaffe — translates to "paramount coffee," but that's based on what my online translator says. I think the site should be called "Kongstygghet," which allegedly translates to "paramount ugliness."

There's a lot else that's wrong. Just start at the top of Does My Web Site Suck? Checklist 1 and work your way down.

On the other hand, you have to look at those wicked, wicked, animated, rainbow divider bars and admire the bravura of anyone who would use them that much on one page. I haven't seen them used on a site in like forever. These bars are so tacky and trashy that even groups who use the rainbow as a symbol refuse to use them on their sites. I'll have to figure out where I can use them here on WPTS.

Go to Kongkaffe

20. IKEA Design Stories

Submitter comments: You'd think that IKEA would know better than to use Mystery Meat Navigation (and music, for that matter).

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Mystery Meat Navigation is most often tied to the misuse of Flash and today's example is no exception. Ironically, Ikea is one of the few web sites that uses Flash correctly. By "The correct use of Flash," I'm talking about using it to show you how to put together one of their products.

Yes, it's cute. Very cute. For about 60 seconds. Even though you can turn the music off, just let it play for about 30 seconds and you'll be begging for weasels to rip your flesh.

IKEA Design Stories