While the internet as a popular medium enters it’s awkward teenage years, you would have thought that bad design would slowly disappear into the ether.  By bad design I mean those third-trimester-abortions of sites that people would knock up and host on geocities.  Terrible tabular designs containing frames, eye-bleeding colour clashes, horrible little animated GIFs, and not forgetting amazing music playing in the background.

Many of those amazing sites from those heady days have slowly disappeared, but some remain, and this post aims to celebrate and salute those websites that stick 2 fingers up at standards,css and ‘web 2.0′, sites so fantastically grotesque that if directly looked at would cause permanent retinal damage.

Now I’m not a great designer by any means, I’m more a code monkey, but I can tell when a site is bad.  But not just bad.  Gloriously bad, so bad that they are actually pretty damn brilliant, so bad that they would have had to put in a lot of effort to make them that bad (trust me, as you will see at the bottom of this entry, I tried!).

So behold, some of the most amazingly bad websites on the interweb.

Havenworks (http://www.havenworks.com)

BBC News- go F**k yourself.   Look at this peach of a site.  At first it just looks like the style sheet has gone walkies, but delving deeper you realise it’s designed like this.  This site is one of the best worst designs out there.  It’s perfect in every way. It’s just way too hard to read, which is a shame for a NEWS BLOG!  I wish I could design sites as brilliant as this, It’s just about perfect.   See also havenworks web division, specialising in other beautiful designs such as Fair Lending in Iowa and Forest Grove Appartments.

Alternative Transport Services (http://www.alternativetransportservices.co.uk/)

Hello Darlings.  It’s always good when in business to keep a formal manner when addressing your prospective customers darlings.  Alternative Transport Services (ATS henceforth), has it all: clashing neon-coloured text, the standard animated clipart GIFs that have nothing to do with the product, streeetccheeed out pictures that repeat, and a front page that is longer than bigfoots dick.  I love it.   Blatently designed by the the mum of ATS’s boss.  I love they way they make a big deal about credit cards not needed, blatently due to the fact they wouldn’t have a clue how to put that option on the website.

Virginia Driver Improvement Programme (http://www.5safepoints.com)

I think this was an exercise in how many flashing, rotating, spinning animations they could fit on one page.   I’m not sure why they need to coat everything in a rainbow bar, but it sure is perty. (that was my best redneck accent).

Although useful, I’m not sure how having the area code for every county in Virginia is useful on the front page.  They also love repeating the same thing over and over again.  it’s great.  Perhaps it is a subliminal site advertising someones wares.  Actually it’s hardly subliminal when you have this hynotising you:.

YOU ARE FEEEELINNG VERY SLEEEEPY,,, BUY SOMETHING NOWWWWWWW.

Lings Cars (http://www.lingscars.com/)

I was torn whether to put Lings Cars here.  It surely is a beautifully horrible website.  But the problem is, is that it’s meant to be.  I think a lot of time and effort went into making this site look how it looks.   It’s all to do with marketing.  People come to the site (named after Ling, the owner of the company) and think they are looking at a personal amateur site, hence getting a personal service by Ling.  Very very shrewd, and effective.  Last I heard the site was doing exceptionally well.

I especially like this at the footer:

Made in the People’s Republic of China (me, not the website… which was handcrafted by Ling, in the UK)

But perhaps that’s me being cynical and the site is actually all done by Ling in her back room.  If so, I salute you Ling.  The site is glorious.

Adveb Web Design (yep web design!!) (http://www.adveb.co.uk/)

So the site is just one of thousands of amateurish table-designed sites around the net.  But wait… this guy is a web designer?  WTF!   Looking at his client list, pretty much all the sites belong in this post.  Check out W J Briggs Fresh Milk. I dread to think how much poor old Bill Brigg forked out for that page.  Top marks to this guy who charges £100 a page for this sh*t.    Actually, I take that back.  It’s people like that that make small businesses not want a website when that’s what they get for their hard-earned cash.   Adveb designs: your’e crap. I don’t salute you.

Longs Cycles (http://www.longscycle.com/ )

Internet shops, as a rule, have to be slightly accessible in order for them to attract customers, especially these days with loads of internet stores offering everything under the sun.  So why would you shop here?   It’s brilliant.  Nice use of frames for the menu at the side, and they have even stolen the checkout buttons from amazon!!

Amazon:

Longs Cycles:

hmmmm.

Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven (http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/)

WARNING:  Before clicking on the link above, please ensure you are not suffering from any heart condition, pregnant or epileptic.   As you may be after clicking (apart from pregnant, unless God impregnates you through the website.  It has that much power.

Don’t coming running to me if you give birth to Jesus.

File under Weird

Below are a few other sites, that while the designs are bad.  They are just plain strange sites.

I KISS YOU

http://www.istanbul.tc/mahir/mahir/

Mahir is an internet legend.  He must be who Sascha Baron-Cohen based Borat on.  His site is the bestest personal website in the world.

apart from…

I Liek Milk!!!

http://www.generation.nl/~hitoshi/

Hitoshi’s site is as old as the internet (well, it feels like it).  His saying ‘I Liek Milk!!!’, has been said thousands of times on internet message boards, but his site is still awesome.

Peter Pan’s Home Page

http://www.pixyland.org/peterpan/

This guy is weird.  Like really weird.  He thinks he is Peter Pan.   The whole site freaks me out.  Check out his fiance’s webpage for equally bizarre mindf**k.

And Now..

I mentioned earlier that it takes A LOT of effort to make a website as bad as above.  It does.  I tried.  And failed.    I spent ages trying to get my blog webpage as bad as those above.  I just couldn’t do it.

The inner geek also made it 100% W3C validated!  Until I added some music that is…
Behold my attempt:

http://www.goatkarma.com/bad/bad.php

Anyone got any other terrible websites?