What are your personal website pet peeves?

[Memory]

i have probably wayy too many strong opinions on personal sites aah (;>_<)
though, these are just a few of them:

• a website is too hefty for it's own good (like too much JavaScript or weird CSS stuff). my PC isn't super powerful, and it's kinda old now, plus my internet isn't great either; ends up crashing my whole browser.
• images being gigantic or not properly optimised (like, a simple image takes megabytes? why?)
• super flashy sites, especially since they overstimulate me a ton
• seeing uncensored (or at least no splash screen) sites, i think you know what i mean by this.

eh it's fine though. it's just annoying seeing these, but half the time i assume they're pretty new to HTML/CSS/etc, so it usually slides fine :P

i think assuming they're just new is better than assuming they're something real nasty, though.

[Semper]

Most of my peeves are tied to accessibility, such as:

• A moving background. I cannot stand a background that moves, and not like small movements like sparkles or the raindrops that add ambience to the Melonland forum (though if they get too flashy I have a hard time staying on the page), I mean a background that just glides across the page, like those dang diagonal moving checkered backgrounds I've seen quite a few people in the web revival have on their website.
• Text on a heavily patterned background, especially if the text is very thin and delicate. I have decent eyesight (I can get by fine without glasses) and I cannot read stuff like that, so I cannot imagine who has such laser perfect sight to read something like that.
• The webmaster has disabled the browser's reader mode. I can usually put up with this if the site is easy to read on its own, but if it has the above issues and I cannot mitigate them with reader mode it makes it feel like the webmaster is doing this with malicious purpose.
• Also I echo @cynderthekitsune I am annoyed by personal sites that have too much to load. My computer isn't quite so old and has a decent amount of ram, but I have still come across web revival sites that get its fan going. Also, as an artist I am irked by other artists who upload big image files that sometimes takes a full minute to render on the page. I KNOW these files don't need to be that big, my goodness. Go drop them into TinyPNG, please.
• Oh and one more thing, when people save their files to an image hosting site like catbox when the images are already so very small that the webmaster could have just hosted it on their site's server. I find a lot of people rely on offsite image hosting even though most of these static site hosts have more than enough space for whatever is on their small personal sites. I've said it before, but I'm a visual artist that has uploaded a majority of my art to my site and I haven't even touched 1GB let alone the 50BG I get from a paid Neocities plan. I don't get why people need to host on something like catbox. It makes their sites load needlessly slow because its grabbing data from a different server OR all the images are broken because the image host either deleted their stuff of is down.

Behold, my peeves.

[fawn]

I learned a lot from this thread and also agreed a lot with this thread!

I'm wondering if my site falls in to the tiny text problem, I also get frustrated when a font is too small to read and just because I don't struggle with the smallness of the font I'm using doesn't mean somebody else won't, but at the very least it's zoom-friendly for now!

Autoplay stresses me out. I'm very sensitive to sound and even if I'm prepared with a warning it will almost always startle me regardless because it's the same as waiting for a toaster to pop for me.
Aesthetically I love "container" sites, sites where we're sitting in the middle of the page and everything is in it's own little box, however I can find it frustrating to read large walls of text or have to scroll within a box just to view a full image.
I also agree on all of the accessibility points, but being very new to this skill myself and just barely figuring out what I'm doing to get the basics out there, I can empathise with smaller sites not being fully accessible as I would be a hypocrite if I felt any other way about it. I'm in this middle ground of allowing myself to take my time with learning what I need to do for maximum accessibility, while also keeping it on the backlog as I would hate for somebody to not be able to enjoy visiting my site just because I was too stubborn to learn a new part of a new skill. At the end of the day my site is something that is for me and sharing it is just the cherry on top so I try to cut myself some slack with the progress I'm making and the rate at which I'm making it, but with every view count that gets added to the homepage the more I'm reminded that it's important to start thinking about making these changes sooner rather than later.

[Eunice]

I cannot read light coloured text on a dark background. For one thing, it gives me migraine. (It's the same with magazines printed like that.) And as I have the beginning of macular degeneration, that makes it worse.

[KiwiMeowo]

• Non-semantic HTML: Ever since I learned that you don't need div tags for everything in your website layout, coding felt a lot easier to manage. Non-semantic HTML still has some use, but it seems silly to me to have "<div class="header">" instead of "<header>".

Oh I actually made that mistake ahahah ^w^; When I first started my website, I wasn't aware of tags like <header> and <section>. And when I learnt more, I made too many pages already and don't want to change them one by one. However, when I make new website designs, I use semantic HTML tags now!

Oh a big one I thought though of; scrolling badge sections! Where people have their site badges in a marquee, so you have to sit there and wait in order to see all the sites badges they have. I think that's really disrespectful because it makes it so much harder for people to see the badges; its a bit like saying "I don't really care about these badges I just have them as decoration"

I remember using marquee for the buttons/badges. I originally wanted to optimize my sidebar space so I used this tag. But then I realised how inconvenient it is to navigate the buttons.

Mine is Autoplay...

It can get kind of annoying when I´m listening to music/podcast and then I open this site and it blares music.

Like just make it optional. you don´t need autoplay.

Oh I don't like it either, especially when there is no warning, sometimes the autoplay music is extremely loud and it scares me badly :(

Stuff I do not mind that much:

1) Carrd-like Sites: It's their site. I cannot tell them what to do. Though, I have got to admit that it takes the fun out of web creation if the code is copy+pasted. If they made it themselves, sure! I don't care!
2) No Meat, Just Decoration: I do not mind seeing sites that are just aesthetic without much context to rely on. I think they are really beautiful in some cases. It is a different approach to most common personal sites. Again, they can do whatever they want with their site.

While I saw multiple people here expressed their frustration on Cardd/pure-aesthetic sites, and I have somewhat similar feelings (I feel sad when I can't read their extremelong long rambling on their fav media), I feel it is their choice whether they just want to use websites to advertise their social media, or just make a pretty page. Like you mentioned, it is their sites.

I used to use Carrd to introduce myself as well, but because of its limitations (and a friend recommending Neocities), I decided to build a website instead. And gradually, I realised the freedom HTML gives me. So I have the hope that people who made a Carrd website will realise they could do much more than brief intros.

Although I enjoy website with thousand words long essays, the pure-aesthetic website can be seen something like an painting. While you can't read it like a long book, it is still pretty to look at, and perhaps the webmaster also took a long time and effort to make them? Yea I think they're cool.

It isn't a pet peeve, but more of something I wish more people would do. I sometimes look at websites on mobile. Most of the websites I come across are not mobile-friendly, which I can understand, as it can be a bit difficult to reformat the design to the mobile screen. Even if the website is not designed for mobile, I believe there is a way for the webpage to have the same look as desktop but shrunken. For some websites however, the layout would get messed up so badly, the content will get squished up and become impossible to view/navigate.[/list]

[xwindows]

• "Please enable JavaScript to view this site."
• "Just a moment... verifying your browser."
• Villain image (called "hero image" by their proponents) so 4K-large that my browser crashes
• Auto-playing music/video (foreground or background do not matter)
• Pop-ups and lightboxes
• Futuristic encrypt-against-choice
• WebP images (as neither my browser nor any of image viewers on my dated setup could display them)

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Small Net thing that grinds my gears:

When you get a warning on the splash page that "the website might contain mature themes and blood and gore" and it's referring to ONE piece of vent art with a little red scrape the author did 5 years ago and it's tucked away on their art gallery.

If you're announcing THAT on the splash page, I expect, I dunno, PNGs of organs right on the front page because you discuss horror movies, or you're running a creepypasta directory, or are overall into edgy stuff and your site is heavily themed around that - not a billion glittery gifs of dancing FIM ponies 

If your site has content that warrants a warning but it's NOT a big part of your website overall, put that warning where the problematic content is! Not on the splash page! That's misinformation, dude!    Blur that vent art and say you can see it in full if you click on it!

Your splash page is your porch, your front door - it's there to give the visitor a good idea of what your site is gonna be about. Don't make it look like a haunted house or a criminal investigation when it's party pop jamboree inside 

[EdgyRabbid]

THis might be a me thing but websites that have a bunch of flashing lights and either 1. Dont warn you or 2. dont have a pause gifs button on their site (I would like to have one, anyone got the JS i can use to pause them?).

I dont know, it just bothers me because some people could die from flashing lights, and whenever a gif has flashing lights i just slow it down. Its super simple!

This is coming from me, someone who has migraines when being exposed to too many flashing lights.

[Skykristal]

• too much unnecessary junk squeezed in a small space. Mostly a thing in old website designs
• too much width for it's content. In defence though, it can be a bit tricky to fill space efficiently all the time. But when the site doesn't even try and has poor basic structure, I find it a bit tedious to consume it's content.
• long animations and transitions. The majority of the animated elements I stumble across are annoying rather than cool. I appreciate still websites
• broken links on an active website. I recently shopped soap products and none of the links to the new products on the homepage was linked correctly and mixed up or broken. NOT A SINGLE ONE. This is not the only website I experienced this on. And it's always important links, homepage highlights and categories. Seriously who is maintaining these. It's never fixed.
• overuse of box-shadow. MY LAPTOP DIES
• overuse of textures and background images, especially when a website has links, text and images on top of that.    Why.If you want people to engage, please make your site viewable. I can barely locate where to click

[Memory]

oh boy there's probably a lot that grinds me with websites.

• "this website requires cookies" (cannot leave popup until i allow so)
• slow as hell even if the website looks bland as hell (especially Microsoft and Google-based sites)
• overuse of box shadows i guess, they slow my PC a fair bit
• WebPs - i get they're good in theory and technically, but in practice they're just frustrating more than anything
• websites with mature or NSFW content without a content warning
• bright, flashing/strobing sites or too many flashing blinkies and things
• or the total opposite - a bland site with not much on it.

you know sites with little content but they take a FHD screen res just to render it without breaking? or something. it's really weird.
or more general - i could describe a form of sites i've noticed, like especially people who have a billion contacts and things, there's probably links to all their contacts maybe their real life name and selfie, but the rest of the site is plain. ???

okayy it's definitely not up for me to judge, but eh.

[AY38910]

Ads. Not the "PNG banner in the corner" kinda ads, but the "JS popup that covers the whole page" kinda ads.

[LILYWORLD]

People who have "link" pages, but instead of there being hyperlinks to other sites & cool things, it's just all of their different social medias- i wish they would label these pages as "contact me", instead of links. maybe it's a silly thing to be annoyed by, but i just like to explore and find interesting small web sites and feel slightly disappointed when a site has no links to others! 

also, that flickering old TV effect that is overlayed onto the entire page, and there's no way to disable it! it's just a very uncomfortable viewing experience!   

[Skykristal]

People who have "link" pages, but instead of there being hyperlinks to other sites & cool things, it's just all of their different social medias.

I agree fully! I've visited many link pages only to see social media links displayed. What I don't mind is a mix of both. I personally do this too, it's cleaner and easier. Or in the footer of a website for example. But I don't see the point in making a links page just for my socials. Its kinda disappointing to see when you hope to discover some great bookmarks or websites.

On the same note, lot's of links without categories. As much as I love discovering useful sites, when there are 50+ links without category or at least a tiny description I don't bother checking it out. Especially because most of the time the first few links I check out from lists like this are never useful to me personally so I don't bother continuing.

[Julikins]

For me, it just depends on the severity...

Minor nitpicks would be the fonts being inconsistent when it comes to the text bodies. If its dependent on whether or not its the header compared to the body text, not much of an issue personally. Not mobile friendly sites for uncommonly visited sites are also minor, but it becomes more of an issue when it's a site that should have enough of a budget and time to test and deploy a mobile-version of the website.

Big players in what does urk me: small text font, font colors blend in with the background, text illegible. Sometimes not having a huge heads up on content warnings via splash pages for indie sites fall in this list but more along the lines of minor considering that I've been guilty of not having one at this point in time. Adverts that cover important part of the page is a big peeve of mine...

For regular sites, I notice a lot of these that restrict users and beg them to get a subscription. My guess is it's a byproduct of consumerism and some sprinkles of what I feel like is capitalistic views. I do understand that hosting a website costs a lot of money but not a lot of folks want to subscribe to something they'll only read once or twice a month/year. I sure as heck wouldn't do so. The anti-Ad-Blocker pop ups are my worst adversary. Main reason for using one in the first place is because the sudden onset of sound and slowdown happens as an ad starts playing. I still hear a few of those fake giveaway ads saying you won an expensive tech device from the early 2000s into 2010.
I disable my ad-blockers for no site.

I can understand the links/contacts being mixed in and the frustration that comes along with that. Not sure how else to mention the original person that brought it up, but otherwise not a lot of folks take it into account. If nothing else, having them separated by sections on the same page is a nice compromise.

[Memory]

For regular sites, I notice a lot of these that restrict users and beg them to get a subscription. My guess is it's a byproduct of consumerism and some sprinkles of what I feel like is capitalistic views. I do understand that hosting a website costs a lot of money but not a lot of folks want to subscribe to something they'll only read once or twice a month/year. I sure as heck wouldn't do so. The anti-Ad-Blocker pop ups are my worst adversary. Main reason for using one in the first place is because the sudden onset of sound and slowdown happens as an ad starts playing.

this exactly. especially on mobile it's almost predatory.

especially since i have iPhones and they're a few years old it can slow them down to a crawl, and you know ads that open even if you click the big X? the worst offenders.
it literally opens what the ad links to, but in some cases it just opens it in a new tab while i'm still on the original site i was on.

weirdly enough this crap is most common on article sites -- ads that are too big for 9:16 phones, anti-ad blocker popups (some you can't even leave), subscription popups (especially if it's just for reading the site itself) when i only wanna read a single article, and cookies that i'm forced to accept.