Does anyone have personal website pet peeves?

[sloth_army1]

Recently I've spent a lot of time browsing websites just by going through webrings, and it is kind of annoying to me how many of them you have to go searching for. I'm fine if it's on your main page, or if you have a clearly labeled page for your webrings or links, but I've seen a lot of websites where I go through the whole site looking at all of their stuff only to realize that I never once saw the webring I know they are a part of and I have to go on a scavenger hunt finding it.

I'm definitely guilty of some of the things pointed out here. Basically every image on my website is bigger than it should be. I also should really look into more readable fonts for different parts of my website, because right now it is not very accessible for people with dyslexia.

[dogbrain]

a more minor one is the weird animosity towards mobile users it feels like some people have? I dont think theres anything wrong for having your website built for your computer and your computer alone, but i sometimes get the vibe that some people are a little antagonistic towards people who are on the indie web on their phone - like not everyone has a computer yknow? idk

i noticed this too!!! i'm so glad you pointed this out.... i mostly see lighthearted ribbing rather than genuine malice, but it does put me off when i see the latter. i understand wanting your site to be viewed the way it was intended, but you gotta remember over 50% of people browse the net with their phones nowadays to me, that alone makes it more than worth doing the bare minimum to make your site mobile-accessible (which, often, is as easy as including <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> between your head tags!)

[sunnyp4rk]

Funny, I was actually typing out a rant earlier about how so much of the indie web is inaccessible in many forms (specifically about sites where content is blocked by divs and images and hard to access. If I can zoom out and see all of the content, I still consider that to be accessible). Like, I primarily use my laptop, but if I'm at work, I'll use my phone, and many sites are unintelligible on mobile.

Really, the big pet peeve I have is the flashing lights and images. I'm not epileptic, nor am I photosensitive, but so many sites give me a headache when I visit them.

[fairyrune]

this was a really interesting thread to read. i'm personally guilty of many of these sins, but either 1) it's not content that is required to view the site, like my scrolling badges on my index page, or 2) it's something i'm already working on, like mobile accessibility. that being said, a few of you have made me think a bit differently about how i want to design things going forward.

for me the biggest thing is not just mobile inaccessibility, but the outward hostility that @jack_dawlia mentioned. a while ago i read this blog post, and though i'd been intending to make my site responsive for a while, it really pushed me to do so ASAP. i saw a discussion on another site where someone said they wanted to intentionally make their site inaccessible on mobile because "the point is to simulate the old web, therefore people should browse on desktop". i thought about this blog post again then.

i wouldn't consider any of my accessibility concerns pet peeves. it's not a "pet peeve" if i can't access the upper floors of a building without exhausting myself, after all...

another thing is that people who own personal sites are just people who own personal sites; they don't necessarily align themselves with old/indie web philosophies. with that in mind, stuff like social media links and "corporate design" are things that make me think "not my cup of tea" and that's that.

a real pet peeve of mine is when people host their images on something like catbox for no discernible reason. generally image files are not going to be so large and numerous that you'll need to do this. and if they are really taking up so much space, there's better places to do it that give you full edit access to those images even after they've been uploaded.

by the way, at least on firefox-based browsers, if you hit CTRL+SHIFT+M, you get to see how the page looks on a pretty wide variety of devices + you're able to input your own dimensions. very handy!

[Dynaknights]

Kind of weird, but I have a distaste for when a site has little to no content outside of social media links along with a bunch of linked basic web dev tutorials and such. It's not that I don't have a problem with providing resources for web dev, of course. It's just 1) what if someone is looking for intermediate and advanced web dev resources instead and 2) it sometimes sounds like 'making a website is the new retro and niche thing to do,' especially if the webmaster's own site hasn't been updated in a long while/is stricken by terminal 'under construction'-itis on every page except the 'about me' and index.

I cite this one specifically because I see quite a few sites that offer little but these, not even aesthetics or anything. But it's not the worst issue in the world.

Also, chatboxes. I don't usually have an issue with them -- especially on sites with less traffic -- but I think webmasters should at least keep a stern eye on them before they're faced with a colorful litany of slurs or other derogatory/generally hateful language as I've seen out and about.
I'm certain this happens with guestbooks, too, but I find that chatboxes provide less formality than guestbooks do (like a forum post versus a social media post), which is probably why they're nearly always the victims of this...