Good Lessons From Really Bad Websites

If you want to explain good website design, especially to the younger generation, build an awful website. If you're not explaining website design, your site will make a good joke for other webmasters. They will enjoy pointing out what you forgot, helping you build the world's worst website.

Animated GIFs are very 1990s. Spinning flags to show your patriotism, dancing babies or other GIFs that will induce seizures is mandatory for an awful website. Remember, the younger generation has never seen the dancing baby GIF.

Page dividers are essential. There’s no need for white space; add lines, preferably glowing or moving ones, to separate text.

Don't forget to make your navigation clever. Words are boring; use pictures instead. Visitors may not understand what the icons mean, but after a few tries, they will find what they need. Putting the navigation menu is an odd location, like on the right side, will keep visitors on their toes.

Almost all 1990s websites had counters. Surprisingly, you can still get free hot counters online in various colors. The only thing worse than having a hit counter on your website is using it for your analytics.

Websites designed in the 90s had music that automatically played when a visitor landed on the site. Today, this is a bad design feature; even a musician's website shouldn't automatically play music. If people want to hear the artist's music, they can figure out how to hit the play button.

Colorful websites were popular in the 1990s. Too many of them had distracting rainbow or pattern backgrounds. Reading the text was next to impossible. Still, they were better than the websites that stuffed so much text on the homepage that there was no place where the background showed.

When your website gives people headaches and takes forever to load, you know you're ready for the big time. If you are very lucky, you'll earn a spot on Web Pages That Suck. For more information click here http://justinbenner.ca.