Junk content

Many years ago I started making websites and I have seen a variety of good and bad things. I’ve learned that what matters the most when it comes to website content is quality and not quantity. If you could choose only one between the two, which one would you pick: a bag with two or three nice things, or a bag full of human excrement? That is not such a hard decision, and I’m pretty sure you’ll pick the first option unless what you aim for is growing some plants. (Fertilizers?)

It makes my blood boil to see websites with hundreds of “visitor content” pages that even summed up equal less than 2 minutes of hard work and common sense. That is exactly what is missing from your thousands (they’ve multiplied) pages of crap, hard work and common sense. Because if anyone really does care about making something good, they’d dedicate a little more time, and they’d put more effort into it. How do you know when something is being put enough effort into? Common sense.

I have seen so many websites of this nature lately, that I just have to write about it. Write about it and wish in the depths of my heart that they read it and become conscious of their actions.

The first thing bothers me is seeing a page labeled “content”. How about this for the coolest navigation: “about me, content, domain, links”. Yeah, because your “about me”, your “domain” and your “links” section aren’t content, right? Wrong! Content refers to what is contained in your website (doesn’t that make sense), so technically, everything that your site contains IS content. If you insist on keeping the label “content”, then why don’t you shove you three-lines “about me” page and everything else in there too. That way you’ll have a smaller navigation, that only says “content” and you’ll have more blank space for your junk.

Then, the links. Let’s see, how can we exploit links? How about, we make a page for the affiliates? To make the page really really full, I make a huge list links with text, one under the other, so it takes up more space. Then, I make a button wall! With all the same links as above. That way I am twice are sure that my visitors will pick one of them. Then, let us make a page for a siblings. Because online, being a sibling site and affiliate have nothing to do with each other, so they need a whole new page. Better yet, let’s also make a page for the online friends. And to top it, a page for the affiliates, the siblings and the online friends altogether. That is four fricking pages just to list the crappy websites you use to frequent. That is if you do frequent them. Because these pages usually have 800 affiliates, 200 siblings (cuz dey’re speshel zo eye haev lezz!!1one) and 50 online friends. Do they honestly, like or even visit them all? Because I see no point in linking to a website that you don’t like. Oh yeah, but they want hits so they’ll link exchange anyone (another story…)

How about reviews? I really like well written, dedicated website reviews. Now, I hate just as much badly written, non dedicated website reviews. Some webmasters get into the business of reviewing other’s websites just for the sake of adding a page to their *content* section. The thing is they have absolutely no criteria to judge anyone. Their rubric is as follows (based on a couple of sites I’m looking at right now) splash page 10points, layout 10 points, content 50 points, link me 20 points, extras 5 points, special 5 points. WTF! They take off points for not having splash pages. Because they want everyone to be like them, and have a splash page to link their 1500 “sibs/affis/bof” and to link the requirements like “your browser must browse pages, to view this site you need patience, you need love, you need Internet Explorer 3, and the willingness to link me”. Then they give the same amount of points to the layout as they did to the splash page like they are worth the same or have the same level of importance. Then about half of the points go for the content, specifying that you only get the full points if you have 200+ pages of *content*. You mean, shit pages like yours? Of yeah, and how good your site is, depends on whether you link back or not. And then some meaningless stupid categories of judgment like “special”, “extras”, “more”, “whatever”. They can’t do math, so the after they notice their numbers don’t sum up to a hundred they make stupid things like this so they can later say”oh I I didn’t see anything special in your site, so I took 10 points off in this category”.

Review the website. I have seen a couple of websites with this option lately. I think it is nice to have your visitors voluntarily review you… but come on! Asking them to link you back as a MUST? First the webmaster asks the visitor to link them if they want to get a review. That is fair. But, having to link to make the review is just moronic.

Free graphics. There are only a couple problems with the free graphics. First, they are made with stolen celebrity images. Second, they blink like hell. Third, they have stupid messages. Fourth, they suck from here to forever! Why? Because they’re artless pieces of shit made by someone who wasn’t even making an effort of looking at they were making. Brush splat here, celebrity picture there, stupid whorish message, icon number 8796 is added to the page. Don’t we have enough of that at the myspace “resource” websites out there?

Free layouts. Usually, when a website of this kind offers a “free layout” it refers to an ugly, low quality, brush splattered, blend made in less than a minute. How is a stupid ugly blend a layout? Where is the code? It doesn’t even resemble a layout more than a pile of vomit does.

Free fonts! How about redistributing the coolest fonts, which I didn’t make? Fonts come with readme files, and I’m sure that most of them don’t say “plz redistribute moi!” Get this in your head people, fonts are hard to make. They take time, talent and dedication! Something that you most people certainly haven’t heard of.

Free celebrity pictures! How about a coppermine gallery full of stolen material? It doesn’t matter if it took you a hundred years to find that picture on Google images, or if you had to dig deep into your old magazine pile to find it and scan it, the picture still does not belong to you! It belongs to the photographer, whose name is probably at the bottom of the picture/scan, but you can’t see it because you already photoshopped it out. Giving credit / link to the website where you got it from or the magazine you scanned it from, does not make up for you stealing from a photographer’s hard work!

Free award! OMG LYKE HEZRE a FREE award for visiting my page, it says, thanks for visiting mah page!!1 remember to link it back to me! - OMG! I got an award for visiting this page! I am going to direct link it from every page of my site. In the sidebar and header, so it displays…twice! In reality, nobody wants your ugly “award”, which is only a link provider to you. (Most) visitors aren’t that stupid.

Free brushes! Who wants free brushes of things like words I typed with my cool Arial font? I mean, you could never ever achieve that greatness on your own. How could I survive without that distorted swirl made with a 2px round brush? Take my brushes!

Name suggestions. I have seen so many of these, and in the worst of their expression. Things like domain name suggestions, website name suggestions, pet name’s suggestions, baby’s name suggestions, you’re new tattoo’s name suggestion. Come on, nobody ever needs this! You are wasting your fingers’ energies on crap. Not that I care about your energy, honestly. It’s for the sake of my sanity.

Other suggestions. When I am in a crucial moment of my life, I’m going to this teeny site to get advice and suggestions. Like, what tattoo should I get, where should I pierce myself, what color should I die my hair, what shoes should I wear this shirt, which hand do I use to write a letter! Even better, they’ve even got suggestions for bettering your site, like “content pages ideas”. I have seen so many of these! And the ideas are even crappier than the ones that are actually in use! And they require you to link them back for the idea, because it was their idea to make a page called “about me”.
Birthday list. Birthday list? Come on… nobody ever cares!

Guess something. You must have seen thousand of these, and that is an easy number to reach because there are like a hundred different games like this in a single website. Guess the celebrity, guess the word I’m thinking, guess the song I have stuck in my head, guess the number I was thinking of when my car was leaking oil, guess how many eyes I have! What do I get if I win? Another ugly award to link the website!

PSD’s. I really hate these. Most of the ones I have seen are nicely cut, but first, they are made out stolen celeb images and second, they just scream “laaaazy!”. Not to the webmaster but to the target audience. Personally I wouldn’t want an audience full of people who can’t cut their own images, and rather come to my site to take copyrighted material that I stole =P

Old, tired reads. I am really tired of seeing the overly copied-and-pasted reads of 235 things to do in an elevator, at wal-mart, etc. The problem is that some websites seem to get them all! They hog all the 6282097358 old reads that exist and put them together in a page. ugh.

Tutorials. The last thing that a person like this can make is tutorials. The instructive pages of websites like these are horrible collections of crap. They have a gazillion tutorials, yeah, they must the computer/internet/website gurus. They can teach you how to turn on your computer, how to add users AND change their avatars, how to open Internet Explorer. In the advanced section, how to make a link in HTML, or add pictures, and OMG how to make stars fall from the top of your page and how to add automatically playing music. But if you are even cooler, you could get to the s00per section where they have tutorials on things like how to add 200 filters to a photo without making it loose the human shape of the celebrity it was, how to use brushes, how to install fonts, and all that sort of things that you would have never known without that site.

Now let’s sum this up. What have we learned? It is good to have content in our websites, it is what keeps our visitors coming back. After all, a website is all about the visitors. However, the quality of this content is much more important than the quantity of it. Sure, you may be tempted to add and add things to your website to make it look full, and at first glance, some visitors will be impressed. But if no effort is put into every page of your website, it lacks uniqueness and it feels hollow, and eventually no visitor will have interest or use for those pages that were quickly put together and published. Instead, if the time is taken to think and assemble every section of a website, and every page is carefully written and designed help or entertain, it will have something that sets them apart from every other website. A carefully thought page has something special: it is all yours, and all you. You won’t find anything just like it online, because an exclusive creation of you. Now, there could be similarities here and there, the differences will shine, and an innovative website is always interesting and remembered.