Irish Webdesign Standards - bailieborough.com

Adam

Here's a beauty for ye to scowl at! www.bailieborough.com

Possibly one of the worst sites I've ever encountered... It makes me cringe...

Thoughts? Is this the way forward for web standards in our country?? :mad:

mick.fr

I have seen worse in Ireland.

Anyway what are the good websites in Ireland ?
I mean which ones are well designed to your opinion ?
I am not a webdesigner myself but I am curious to see what's your standards are.

wheres me jumpa

I have def seen a lot worse.

Adam

You've seen worse? I'm not even going to knock the design for now, which imo is terrible, but as it's opinion based we'll leave it alone. But how about a site that doesn't have literally hundreds of validation errors, and doesn't fall apart randomly in places as here: http://www.bailieborough.com/training/courses/computer_training.php

I didn't focus on the design in my original post, I specifically said standards i.e. W3C etc.

Not to defend the design at all.

Mind you, it's understandable that you took me up wrong, not being a webdesigner you probably weren't aware of actual standards existing.

mick.fr

Mirror wrote:

Mind you, it's understandable that you took me up wrong, not being a webdesigner you probably weren't aware of actual standards existing.

Well I am not but I have a lot of websites (Onlines services, porn, Corporates...) and I use to work with the US, so I know what is an effective website and how things should be roughly.

I am just curious to see what kind of websites are goods for you, just to see if we are talking about the same thing.

No rant or anything, I just would like to know a bit more about the Irish standards.
Thanks

aidan_walsh

not being a webdesigner you probably weren't aware of actual standards existing.

I suspect thats the problem here too. That, and many people don't give a flying Dutch fiddler about standards as long as it renders correctly. Anything else is unnecessary work in their eyes.

Adam

mick.fr wrote:

Well I am not but I have a lot of websites (Onlines services, porn, Corporates...) and I use to work with the US, so I know what is an effective website and how things should be roughly.

I am just curious to see what kind of websites are goods for you, just to see if we are talking about the same thing.

No rant or anything, I just would like to know a bit more about the Irish standards.
Thanks

Well Irish standards is the issue, I'm asking is this where Irish standards are? Any kind of website is good for me if it validates (or at least comes closer than that tripe) and is user friendly. I find that website a pain to browse, it doesn't make me want to read on.

I mean I could Google for half an hour and probably come up with a list of websites I like, but the focus on "like" isn't really appropriate when discussing standards.

Rather than querying me on my preferences, what do you feel stands for that website that you need to question my opinion, when you haven't really offered one yourself?

To back that up, here's my cons list on bailieborough.com:

• terrible validation
• dead links
• links to pages with no content
• bad file structure
• bad user interface
• pages without design aspect (as per previous post)

Is any of that defendable?

Where have you seen worse?

p.s. post not to be taken as personal attack

mick.fr

Mirror wrote:

Well Irish standards is the issue, I'm asking is this where Irish standards are? Any kind of website is good for me if it validates (or at least comes closer than that tripe) and is user friendly. I find that website a pain to browse, it doesn't make me want to read on.

I mean I could Google for half an hour and probably come up with a list of websites I like, but the focus on "like" isn't really appropriate when discussing standards.

Rather than querying me on my preferences, what do you feel stands for that website that you need to question my opinion, when you haven't really offered one yourself?

To back that up, here's my cons list on bailieborough.com:

• terrible validation
• dead links
• links to pages with no content
• bad file structure
• bad user interface
• pages without design aspect (as per previous post)

Is any of that defendable?

Where have you seen worse?

p.s. post not to be taken as personal attack

Yep I would agree anyway, standard is a superficial thing.
Good looking, effective way to bring information, good maintenance, no dead links are definitely making a web site good or not.
Design is really important, but really good websites can be done with only some basic and effective design anyway.

Adam

mick.fr wrote:

Yep I would agree anyway, standard is a superficial thing.
Good looking, effective way to bring information, good maintenance, no dead links are definitely making a web site good or not.
Design is really important, but really good websites can be done with only some basic and effective design anyway.

...I'm a little confused, I'm not sure where that post came from or went to...

Can't we all just scowl in harmony??

destraynor

It's content first, information architecture second, layout third, design fourth, and standards fifth.

Okay thats slightly simplifying it , but seriously, no one cares about standards. And those "XHTML COMPLIANT" buttons look soo stupid, who gives a ****?

The biggest reason the Bailieborough site is crap is cause after 5 seconds of reading it, I still can't work out what the hell is going on. All sites should communicate within 3 seconds what they're about. As in , if you sit Joe Soap in front of it, for 3 seconds, he'll know what sort of site it is.

There are millions of terrible websites, and probably thousands of terrible Irish websites, but you don't need to go next or near the w3c validator to find that out. Standards are the least of their worries.

Adam

True, but shouldn't any web designer selling their product have the decency to do it right? Or at least make a decent effort??

aidan_walsh

Do you know who developed it? Given that the FAS logo is fairly prominent at the end it could well have just been the Best in Class from a recent HTML course who did it. They won't have touched on standards, or anything of the like.

Also, I'm not sure why you're suggesting that this is an "Ireland" thing. **** web dev shops exist the world over, and local communities the world over buy from them.

ninebeanrows

Don't bash bad websites! There the way forward:o

Now i feel guilty for polluting the web!! I do try my best though:eek:

axer

I think this website is getting far more bashing than it deserves. So it doesnt validate but its not the worst looking website in the world - I have definitely seen alot worse. Even as it is, it is better to have a website such as that than none at all.

There are alot of bad websites out there for cities/towns and villages all over Ireland. This is because proper investment is not put into these websites with proper controls etc put in place to monitor them. Most of them go dead not long after being created if those responsible for the website originally don't stick with the project long term plus they generally do not have the funding to keep the website running smoothly long term. They probably don't even get enough initial funding to create a great website at the begining either. Then you have the other problem of the local IT shop/business usually being the creator of said websites when they are neither designers nor developers but are seen as the local experts.

Mirror, you must have a bigger gripe with this website than just it being " Possibly one of the worst sites I've ever encountered... It makes me cringe..." Should you not get your own house in order before you start preaching?

comer_97

is this a rant against a competitor?

forbairt

comer_97 wrote:

is this a rant against a competitor?

its either a rant or a way of drumming up links to it ...

Either way ... I think the topic is a bit stupid ... ... what makes irish webdesign different to english / american / whatever ... I can pick thousands of sites out there that are a LOT worse than this one .. both visually and standardly (is that a word I can use in this case)

Do we really care that its an irish site ? Personally its a rather nice site ... grapically ... semi pleasing ...

While its not doing great things for standards ... so be it .. its up an running so to speak ( in places ) ... they got the job and you didn't ... so instead of criticising anothers site .. when no one asked you to ... why not work on your marketing skills ... and portfolio ... so you can get the job in future

Alternatively everyone on here could start picking websites they hate and posting them on here ... which I really don't think would do much good ...

- can you tell I've not slept much in the last 3 days :eek: *rant over*

wheres me jumpa

comer_97 wrote:

is this a rant against a competitor?

Thats the feeling Ive had regarding this thread.

comer_97

we should be looking for advice or perhaps a critique of our own work. We should have discussions about the lack of standards. We should not pick on a site at random (or not so random) like this case.

flogen

axer wrote:

Mirror, you must have a bigger gripe with this website than just it being " Possibly one of the worst sites I've ever encountered... It makes me cringe..." Should you not get your own house in order before you start preaching?

Would just like to quickly point out that Dáil30 is my design based mainly on an existing wordpress theme... Mirror was kind enough to put the second sidebar in for me but didn't help with the rest.
Any comments, tips, critiques or advice, however, are greatly appreciated (perhaps via PM so not to pull this off topic.

Gordon

My favourite awful website currently (rollover the search button, you'll enjoy it. Although it's not Irish afaik.

Adam

One final post I suppose...

First off, while many of you seem to believe I'm jealous, or that the site was built by a competitor, neither are true. The site was in fact built by a "professional", and has been well funded for the last two years. The folk that maintain it content wise (who I am associated with, hence discovering this) do so regularly, but don't have the expertise to do much more. My real qualm is the fact that the company that built did made a shambles of it, and more than likely charged through the nose for it, and clearly couldn't care less about it, and that my friends is what disgusts me most.

My apologies for the misconceptions etc. I simply didn't want to make the thread a personal vendetta, as I still wonder is this the norm amoung web designers. And I won't name names either, though anyone with know how can probably work it out!

Laslo

Meh. Most of the web design in Ireland is rubbish anyway. Lots of talentless nonces slagging each other off and nothing to show (or willing to show) for their own efforts.

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I've sh*t out better websites than the stuff in their "portfolio", and I'm total amateur!

And I agree that the OP's websites are nothing to shout about design wise either. And before anyone starts shouting for examples of stuff I've done, they were either done for intranet sites or simple temporary sites.