bUD uGGLY Wab Design

August 17, 2012 9:05 AM

bUD uGLLY dESIGN -- creating ugly web sites since 1996

Featuring tastfule use of the blink feature!

posted by Chocolate Pickle (26 comments total)

Here's the very first incarnation of their web site, 15 years ago.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:14 AM on August 17, 2012

*muffles giggles with both hands*

Thanks, Chocolate Pickle!
posted by infini at 9:19 AM on August 17, 2012

And yet I've seen photographers' sites that were less usable.
posted by jedicus at 9:21 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

As a chronically depressed editor (of words), I appreciate the spelling and punctuation misteaks in the copy almost as much as I appreciate the whole thing itself.
posted by scratch at 9:21 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Where's the dancing banana?
posted by X | ANA | X at 9:22 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

I remember the old World's Worst World Wide Web Site; it had leopard-print wallpaper and a picture of Spider Man.
posted by "But who are the Chefs?" at 9:24 AM on August 17, 2012

This is oddly reminiscent of every website I ever created as a teenager with FrontPage 2003. Those were the good days.
posted by lobbyist at 9:25 AM on August 17, 2012

HoW dId YoU fInD mY gEoCiTiEs WeBpAgE?? ( ((><)) )
posted by littlesq at 9:42 AM on August 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

'Under Construction' gifs are free, people! This is a top-shelf company.
posted by hot_monster at 9:45 AM on August 17, 2012

It can't be that ugly, since there's no "Requires IE6" gif anywhere.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:54 AM on August 17, 2012

Needs more visitor counters!
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:07 AM on August 17, 2012

Needs more 'HTML Writers Guild' badges.
posted by usonian at 10:16 AM on August 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

That's hilarious. Makes me thinking of a site some fellow devs and I talked about but never followed through on years ago, we were going to put it up at "baduserexperience.com," and it would have the same sort of features--auto-playing sound onload, inconsistent/incoherent navigation and controls, grotesquely clashing design, etc.

If you look at the source there's some funny stuff in there too...for example, on the tips page (*snarf*), after the head tag and before the body tag, which in and of itself cracks me up, is this chunk of brilliant nonsense:

<stop></stop>

<this>
<ahhhh>
</ahhhh>

</this>

And at the bottom of that same page apparently they've added a huge chunk of space using a pre tag with a whole lot of whitespace in it. After that is some more nonsense:

<the end>

</the end>

Does anyone else find this kind of stuff funny?
posted by dubitable at 10:35 AM on August 17, 2012

Ah, I was wondering who did the web design for Potomac Airfield.
posted by exogenous at 11:07 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

ERHMAGEHRD

WAB DESIGN
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 11:25 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Remember when XKCD did this?
posted by schmod at 11:48 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Another board I visit has a long-running "worst of the web" compendium, and we rate sites on various moves, like the moving rainbow line, tiled backgrounds, hit counters, "under construction" images, "Welcome to GoLive" page titles, etc.

These guys hit all the notes.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:51 AM on August 17, 2012

It's also home to TinyZine - "the world's smallest webzine" - featuring The Adventures of Tiny the Toaster.
posted by scruss at 11:52 AM on August 17, 2012

I miss My First Tripod
posted by infini at 11:57 AM on August 17, 2012

Awesome! If you want more of this sort of thing, check out Contemporary Home Computing where Olia and Dragan mine the Geocities archive looking for such gems of "vernacular" design.
posted by mr.ersatz at 11:58 AM on August 17, 2012

Finally a song worth having stuck in my head.
posted by jwhite1979 at 12:24 PM on August 17, 2012

The music on this page is hilarious (give it a couple of minutes)
posted by ShutterBun at 4:29 PM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Microsoft Internot exploder 0.2
posted by Houstonian at 5:30 PM on August 17, 2012

Where is the dancing banana?
oh nooooos my kid went to hackasaurus and he chose as a project to change the google website to include the dancing banana.
posted by chapps at 12:09 PM on August 18, 2012

in fact I'd say all the kids who were over 10 incorporated the dancing banana.
younger kids got pokeman and my little pony.
posted by chapps at 12:09 PM on August 18, 2012

these site designs are visually exhausting and incoherent
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 5:12 PM on August 18, 2012