‘Web Design’

This is part one of a mini-series of blog posts that I will be referring to as “The Flaws and Delusions of Web Designer Depot”

I don’t get particular enjoyment out of pointing out the flaws in others, but in this case it is so worth it.  For over a year, WebDesignerDepot (Web Designer Depot) has been handing out terrible advice and ripped off posts to its users.  Their articles lack attention to detail, sense, and quality of any kind.

Perhaps the funniest post I read of theirs was one that they did on “Coding for Speed and Quality”.  I say it is funny because if they can’t even control the speed at which their own website loads and is presented (it is slow and looks like someone threw up on the header – also lacks any navigation whatsoever) why in the world are they writing an article about it?  The site (uncached) weighs an incredible 1642.3KB, with a cached weight of 118.3K and all the while making an unprecendented 160 HTTP requests.  The entire site took an astonishing between 22 and 29 seconds for me to load uncached and between 14 to 20 seconds cached.  Maybe I’m nitpicking, but if I’m not on a 56K modem and a site is taking that long for me to load, someone is doing something very very wrong.

The worst part of all of this is that the Web Designer Depot actually has people who drink their kool-aid on a regular basis.  Their following is over 85,000 on twitter and they sport a cool 4,500 Alexa ranking.  You get what you pay for I guess.  At least I assume that’s how they did it – paying users at digg to get their articles to the front page.  There is no other possible way that intelligent beings would ever digg or distribute their drivel.   I suppose it’s easy from there, you’ve got your name in the ring and you become a hobby for beginner and know-nothing web designers and developers who are now doomed for eternity (or at least until they find a better blog).