There are basic tenets of web design that if obeyed create websites that are visually appealing, informative and easy to navigate. Very rarely have I ever seen one website that blatantly violates all of them. A few months ago, I stumbled across a website belonging to a group named the “Almas Shriners.” As I navigated through the website I was apalled by how much it sucked. Every page had a completely different background with the buttons located in different places every time. There was no page that even explained what the group was even about. One page had a couple videos about the Shriners Hospital but nothing to explain what the connection was between the hospital and the group. When I showed this website to some of my classmates, they were equally terrified. One of them wondered out loud when Papyrus would show up. Surprisingly, it never did. When I re-visited this website to remind myself just how bad it was I was pleasantly surprised to discover that since my last encounter with it, the site has been totally redesigned.
The ever-changing backgrounds have been thrown out completely. From page to page, the buttons stay on the left side of the screen and a banner with the group name and their logo is at the top. ON the home page there is a mission statement along with some history about how the group was founded. One thing that bothers me is the placement of the photographs. The first two paragraphs of the welcome message are sandwiched between two images with no captions. One image is of a statue of a man carrying a child and the other is a photograph of the leader of the group. If it were up to me, I would lose the photo of the leader and replace it with the other photograph because it shows what the group is about. That would free up space to move the two paragraphs to the left and get rid of the orphan that they have. Overall, the redesign is an immense improvement over the original. It may not be the most beautiful piece of web design but at least now it communicates its information coherently.
The website I am talking about can be seen here:
http://www.almasshriners.org/index.html
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