Amateurish sites?

[bgt]

You can't really say the largest unofficial Pokemon related site is amaterish.

It's getting the job done and thats all that matters.

As for the black and white site, I don't view it as amaturish. Personally I believe your content attributes far greater value than your layout.

 

[Tyler]

First off, some background: I've been an administrator on a site that was similar size to this (I think I've stated this a few months back) and have experienced quite a bit of what it's like to deal with large websites and communities. I also have sufficient web design knowledge and can code fluently in XHTML, CSS and semi-fluent PHP. I am very familiar with the ins-and-outs of web standards, too.

Lord Kokkei, I have to say, you're horribly misguided. You speak of Web 2.0 and W3C standards as if they are the be-all end-all of website design. Yes, coding by standards is always preferable and yes webmasters should try to follow them, but with a site like Serebii with thousands and thousands of pages, revamping them to match these relatively new web guidelines would be a futile task. It's been already said, but the time spent doing it would be much better off being spent adding to the content - especially since Serebii is driven entirely by content.

You say Serebii is ineffecient. How so? If I wanted to, say, visit a page about the D/P Elite Four, it takes me TWO logical clicks: Diamond/Pearl --- > Elite Four. Exactly the way it should be, and that's just one example. You say Serebii is old. This is ridiculous and irrelevant. My grandma's old, does that mean we get rid of her and replace her? You say Serebii is clunky. Albeit, while this is true, it is also inevitable considering the sheer amount of pages that need to be constantly referenced. For the most part, the server speed also makes up for this fact.

By spending dozens of hours validating the entire site, it would do what, exactly? Cut load times by 0.2 seconds? Hardly worth it, at all. Contrary to what your little webinars and keynotes have told you, Web 2.0 and web standards aren't always necessary, and often by following these standards the users won't see any benefit.

Also, calling Serebii arrogant is also a bit rich. You seem blissfully ignorant as to what running a site of that caliber takes, and considering you've got no experience yourself, I'd stop telling him how to do things. Your know-it-all attitude really is driving me up the wall.

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

I'm fluent in XHTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, and somewhat Ruby & C++.

lol. calling Lord Kokkei inexperienced is pretty sad. He know's what he's doing. His coding is perfect, and his layout/style making is beyond great. He may not have a site now but when he ran a Pokemon site it was a great site. If you would see his sites he had you would take calling him inexperienced back faster than anything else.

I find it completely dumb for people to make there own Pokemon sites, there are plenty of good sites these days and people just keep making sites and then letting them die. I owned a great Pokemon Site a couple years ago where i was getting 1000 unique hits a day. Tell me I'm inexperienced.

Me and Lord Kokkei go way back, so there for we helped each other out a lot.

Still, Serebii is a great site for news and content. There are plenty of ways of making it better. And yes it may not be coded perfectly, you can also code new pages and the more important pages up-to-date with XHTML compliant or whatever you plan on using or would use. A new style would be so much better, the layout is so ugly. I get headaches from just going there.

 

[Mrchewy]

I'm fluent in XHTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, and somewhat Ruby & C++.

lol. calling Lord Kokkei inexperienced is pretty sad. He know's what he's doing. His coding is perfect, and his layout/style making is beyond great. He may not have a site now but when he ran a Pokemon site it was a great site. If you would see his sites he had you would take calling him inexperienced back faster than anything else.

I find it completely dumb for people to make there own Pokemon sites, there are plenty of good sites these days and people just keep making sites and then letting them die. I owned a great Pokemon Site a couple years ago where i was getting 1000 unique hits a day. Tell me I'm inexperienced.

Me and Lord Kokkei go way back, so there for we helped each other out a lot.

Still, Serebii is a great site for news and content. There are plenty of ways of making it better. And yes it may not be coded perfectly, you can also code new pages and the more important pages up-to-date with XHTML compliant or whatever you plan on using or would use. A new style would be so much better, the layout is so ugly. I get headaches from just going there.

I never questioned his coding experience, just his experience at running a site of that size, and since you never mentioned this site you owned, I was forced to make presumptions. My bad if I was wrong (which I was).

It's very important to remember that it takes much more to run a great site then just coding and scripting. While Serebii might fall back a little on the coding, it's miles ahead in terms of content, and really, that's the most important thing. Really, how it looks is up to the eye of the beholder; I'm sure if there was enough demand, he would change the layout but when the overwhelming majority of his visitors are happy with it, there's very little point. On the other hand, he could try and validate all his new pages, and I think she should. Essentially, the point I'm trying to convey here is that you shouldn't update things for the sake of updating. If problems arise with the site, then yes, the code really should be looked at, but when it's in the state it is right now, it's probably better to leave it be.

 

[saul]

Yeh wanna know what I think?

Layouts SHOULDN'T be what matters to people. When it comes down to it, people mainly visit sites to get information - the content.

But the sad tragedy is....

Layouts are what are important to a people.

I don't like that, but that's the reality of it. A site can be a good site without a well designed layout (yes, it can!). But most people won't spend hardly a second on a website if it's poorly designed. Does that make it amateurish? No. When you say 'it' that means the website. The core of the website is its content. The correct thing to say would be: That makes the design amateurish.

I honestly think that it's really sad that people judge websites based on its look. But hey - that's the reality of it. That's the way our minds work. We go to things that look good, not sloppy or bad - it's human nature. But, seriously, why don't you guys get in the mindset of judging a site for its content rather than its design?

Some of you do, and I commend you for that. :)

And of course, a design is important for a website if the website wants to gain massive popularity or bring in reoccurring visitors.

 

[Ooka]

Finally, a good comment. Nice job, and reputation for you Saul. ;)

 

[Geometric-sama]

There's a difference between "functional" and "amateurish". My academic homepage takes all font/colour defaults from the browser, because it only exists to provide information quickly and simply.

You can't say something is a "sign" of an amateurish site. Some sites have stylish layouts lifted from free layout communities, but no information at all. Some sites have tiled backgrounds or flashy images that looked tacky five years ago, but provide a wealth of knowledge.

 

[蜃気楼]

The worst problem is that people abuse graphics made the information hard to read

 

[Geometric-sama]

Turn off images, override styles.

 

[蜃気楼]

Amateurish people use <font> tags, they cannot be turned off.

 

[Avegaille]

I'm sure if there was enough demand, he would change the layout but when the overwhelming majority of his visitors are happy with it, there's very little point. On the other hand, he could try and validate all his new pages, and I think she should.

Wow, gender change. Poor Serebii. XD

Whatever, back on to topic.

For me, a website should have decent content and doesn't have these "coming soon" pages on their link list.

It's actually more annoying to see a bunch of links on the sidebar which actually interest you but doesn't work at all. D:

Layout's only a secondary thing. (because I voted for it on the poll, since the content is not part of the choices).

You really can't say a site is considering amateurish cause of the lack of layout. I actually prefer a simple not-so-focused on the layout website which HAS ACTUAL readable content.

*le flee*

 

[Geometric-sama]

Amateurish people use <font> tags, they cannot be turned off.

I don't know about your browser, but my Firefox has lovely checkboxes for allowing websites to choose their own fonts and colours.

 

[蜃気楼]

I reviewed my book...
A good website must be accessible. They can have graphics, but not be abused. CSS should be used for stylesheet. A bad background image will make the site bad.
A site without layout is like black text and white background, but they does not matter.
Here are the bad backgrounds: https://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/backsuck.htm
A good layout only makes other think you are good at Web design.
I saw a lots of newbies go to DynamicDrive to use canned JavaScripts, they used too much so they made their page load very slow. A typical canned JS user is like that: https://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/slidingmenu.html
If you are using an unsupported browser, you cannot see it.
When I was a newbie, I kept finding Flash generators, but now, I wanted to validate my site.

Some people also make navigation buttons like that: https://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/kai4.htm
Some sites tells you to set font site 14, word spacing 3, color black, window width 1000px and all sort of settings, they are also bad because it is inaccessible.
Many newbies use onmuseover to create hover effect: https://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/vincentflandersdotcom/

This one is the worst, it has all errors and the layout breaks for one pixel of rendering error. https://www.webpagesthatsuck.tv/gandolfos/gandolfos.html

 

[saul]

I reviewed my book...
A good website must be accessible. They can have graphics, but not be abused. CSS should be used for stylesheet. A bad background image will make the site bad.
A site without layout is like black text and white background, but they does not matter.
A good layout only makes other think you are good at Web design.
I saw a lots of newbies go to DynamicDrive to use canned JavaScripts, they used too much so they made their page load very slow.
You can use plugins, but it doesn't mean that you must.
When I was a newbie, I kept finding Flash generators, but now, I wanted to validate my site.

I go back to my point. A LAYOUT DOES NOT MAKE A GOOD WEBSITE! It's the content. Your post merely talks about the layout. But the website is NOTHING without the content.

Is a layout important though? Yes! But even if you have a bad layout, it doesn't make the website amateurish, it makes the design amateurish.

>.<;

Such a simple concept.

 

[蜃気楼]

Now we are talking about abuse of plugins and scripts.
Look at this one: https://medi-alert.com/ (audio started to play after a few seconds)
and this one: https://www.webpagesthatsuck.tv/gandolfos/gandolfos.html They should fix the errors.
trailing cursors are also bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qide9Z4PWG8

 

[CHG-Swampert]

lol that guy said no insulting sites like crazy lol. But those DO suck xD. whats with the trailing cursor. It would be -10 noob instead of -99 if you could even see the date moving around like a freakin timebomb

 

[蜃気楼]

FreeWebs is the worst, it can set trailing cursors, glitter effects and more. Also, DynamicDrive has it too. Amateurs copy full of scripts from DynamicDrive and strip down the credits because they do not read TOS.
Also, MySpace is full of amateurs, they use a Flash generator to generate a glitter text and put full of Flash stuff.
Layout isn't important, because sites of some (esoteric) programming languages only has a simple black text on white BG pages.