Maybe you really do want to slog through another dry list about how to build a good website.  If that’s the case, sorry, but you’re on the wrong page.  This is a lighthearted look at a very serious subject.  We see this stuff all the time on the web.  So, obviously, these must be things that are either acceptable or rules that webmasters don’t know about.

Goals: Who needs them, anyway?  There’s no need to know what it is you want to accomplish with your website.  Just start building it or pay someone a lot of money to build one.  It will come together… someday… maybe.

Never Check Your Site: Viewers evaluate sites based on two criteria; content and graphic design.  If you really want to irk your viewers, let the content get REALLY OLD.  Or, mispel lots of werds.  That’ll get them.

Link Funeral Service: Use dead links.  Don’t bother checking your links periodically because if someone else moves something on their site, it’s not YOUR fault.  Blame it on the other guy.

Be Verbose and Tedious and Maybe Repetitive: People love to read lots of BORING stuff on a web page.  Be sure to use LONG paragraphs instead of bullets so people have to read everything.  This is really important stuff… to you.  And, don’t make use of site links to take people to more information, that’s way too convenient!

Make ‘em Use a GPS to Get Around: Ease-of-use is overrated, image is everything.  If you were taking Graphic Design 101, you would learn to make site navigation intuitive.  To make a website really bad, you could use images as links and not put any supporting text!  After all, this is ART.

Make ‘em wait: Long download times for large files make sure the world knows you have your best artwork out there on the site.  Optimizing images for the web to a screen resolution, about 72 dpi, can make them smaller, faster to download and can provide just as good of an image quality.  But why bother with that whole optimization thing… what a pain.

Use Inconvenient File Types: Rather than using a standard file format like Adobe PDF, save documents in other, less universal formats, like Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, etc.  Of course, if you want to break this rule and get a good, free PDF creator, you could always go to www.cutepdf.com

You Get What You Pay For: Use a free web hosting service.  You’ll get lots of banner ads and pop ups, but you saved a few bucks each month.

Domain, Romaine: Don’t bother getting your own domain name.  Again, this is a money thing.  Why spend ten bucks a year if you don’t have to?  With all the money you saved, you could go buy a nice salad.

Set It and Forget It: Ah, the cruise control of cyberspace.  You can set up your website and never look at it again.  Even when you’re tired of it, leave it out there.  After all, if you’ve got free web hosting and a free domain name, who cares?