Though it’s not strictly relevant in the context of the crappy agency/developers who made the website, maybe you will also find it enlightening that Moviestar.ie is run by a couple of controversial brothers, infamous for running ‘promotional’ businesses which amounted to little more than sucking the vulnerable and the foolish into squandering money on premium phone line ‘opportunities’.

That they were never caught doing anything ‘illegal’ should not dilute the point that shonky is as shonky does, so it should be no surprise that their web developers would be similarly less concerned with standards in either an ethical or financial context.

The Sunday Business Post and Phoenix magazine have had plenty to say about them. Not least alleging that they have used ‘Not for Rental’ retail copies of DVDs to use as rental copies, or more interestingly, much of the copy from http://www.moviestar.ie describing movies appears remarkably similar to the copy from similar movie/rental websites elsewhere.

The Golden Spiders are clearly a Public Relations circle jerk. It’s a shame that a company like Eircom would lend it some credibility with a sposnsorship deal (though considering the standard of Eircom’s Broadband service, perhaps the vague whiff of cowboyism makes it the perfect vehicle for their brand?).

Thaddeus

This includes the Web Design Agency category.

I have completed quite an in-depth study of the accessibility and coding standards employed on each short-listed site.

The first batch of results is available here.

Opinions and criticism of both methodology and outcomes are welcome.

The louder we shout, the sooner someone will hear us….

It is the Great Unwashed who need to be educated, not the design houses. The latter are going to keep pushing out the shoddy work, all the time they can make money.

Unless this campaign reaches the print media, businesses are not going to realise that they are being ripped off.

Seriously though – apart from the IIA, is there any sort of association in this country for webmasters / designers / developers? And if not, why not?

The IIA are fine, but essentially anyone can join provided they cough up the fee. That’s not good enough. What we need is an association where there is some form of application filtering. For example, does the applicant have qualifications? How many sites does he/she have? Are they of a high enough standard?
Membership of this association would then guarantee a minimum level of competence. The association could act as a watchdog and keep the cowboys down.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

even…

the owners of MyHome and Daft have really illustrating how irish commerce is still in the brown envelope days and these awards have no merit

I am frankly embarrassed by the whole thing and the tarnish it leaves and bullshit it brings on the industry……

This site would be absolutely nothing unless people commented on it. I feel quite privileged, and I’m not just saying that. Thank you all for taking the time to come over here in the first place!

TBH I owe you a favour for making your comment – I never would have taken the slightest bit of interest in these ‘awards’ and now it is likely that I will become a thorn in their sides (it’s a habit I have when I come across things that are, well, just wrong)

And I apologise for hijacking the thread too Richard but we’re still kind of inline with the original topic IMO. If not, just say so

Richard, sorry for hijacking your blog like this (36 comments from just 7 contributors)!

Eoghan, I never thought of it like that. I guess we wouldn’t know EXACTLY what makes a plumber the best.

If the Golden Plumber Awards was run by the same crowd, the awards would go not to the plumbers that did excellent plumbing that abided by law, ethics, and quality guidelines, but to the plumbers who got the biggest clients, did SOME of the worst and shoddy work and who had friends working on the panel of the awards.

(Sorry… you dished it out, I ran with it).

I’ve checked my sarcasm monitor and it seems to be working. Sorry if you know someone/work in Tower yourself but their work is rubbish. Some creative potential there… but STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS please. It’s nearly 2007.

It would appear that the criteria is simple. Who can get the highest profile client. NOT what they deliver.

My gears are well and truly ground.

The fact that Daft have two judges on the panel and myHome have one… and that they’re shortlisted for 2 awards each is a absolutely ridiculous.

I know Eircom like their monopolies but it infuriates me that they’re trying to monopolise our careers and our livelihoods like this by promoting something they know nothing about.

its a night out for clients and maybe a bit of cheap PR so we usually let the owners of new sites know when theyre on but i always remind them of what we think of them too

Ergo the GS awards have become a mutual backslapping ground for the bad coders

Indirectly though, great design and coding to standards can have an AMAZING effect on your SE placement. I am speaking from first hand experience here. There are literally HUNDREDS of CSS galleries and standards compliance galleries out there. Need I say more? Not to mention the link love you get for an innovative design.

Anyway, getting back on point, there is clearly something not right with/inside the GSA. So what can be done?

BTW, suggestion for the new award – The Golden Eagle Awards
Logo – Golden eagle eating a golden spider

@Dave – I’m actually for validation from an SEO standpoint. Not because I think it helps with rankings but because I think that if you code to standards you are a lot less likely to run into trouble down the road. Pretty sure that the bots can parse some real drivel. I have come across instances where very poor code has caused grief for bots. I don’t think there is any bonus algorithmically for clean code per-se but I have a feeling that really terrible code might possibly receive some penalty or be flagged for further scrutiny. Just my opinion mind and I have nothing to back up that last point.

Win: Standards and Usability will be rightfully promoted and awareness raised.
Win: The bigger guys, in the wrong would take notice and adapt.
Win: We would be promoting the people DESERVING the awards.

Count me in

P.S. I meant to say “down” with the Eurovision!

Count me in

It’s a shame because this is not only promoting undeserving sites and companies, but also holding back public awareness of how important accessibility and standards actually are.

Richard, I don’t know weather or not your point was for or against validation having an effect on SEO (I assume it was against) but just to clear up, it does not. (Not directly anyway). Companies using standards for this reason are not only being misled, but are doing it for the wrong reasons.

Wouldn’t it be great if the “Little Guys” could start our own national awards and award the REAL winners?

Good man. That’s one for the blog. Let me know if you’re going to post anything about it. I’d like to go through the site and post about it’s shortcomings on my blog and link to your post about NCBI’s comments (if they do comment).

So annoyed about the moviestar site that I sent an email off to NCBI asking for their comment on the issue.

Mojo thanks for bringing this up

You mean “down there”. They’re a load of bo11ocks, if you ask me.

Check out this award winner in a non-IE browser: http://www.corkcorp.ie/

(I presume it also breaks in IE7 though.)

None of the above sites stands out under any of those. They are just bog standard sites.

One subsite off the top of my head – http://mapviewer.broadband.gov.ie/ServiceByLocationSearchWF.aspx
Now there is a site [ignoring the usual 106 warnings] that offers something a bit different. That uses all of the criteria. That is the kind of thing the judges should be looking for.

Frankly, in my book the GS awards are up there with the Eurovision Song Contest

They are just hacked together. Check out the upper-case then lower-case element tags on HomeWise and onlinetradesman

MovieStar obviously decided that visually impaired people don’t watch movies – not an ALT attribute to be seen.

I wonder what the National Council for the Blind would think of that site? Nominated for an award?

So I guess it’s largely subjective. However, I suspect standards and accessibility must come under technology. At the end of the day, I call foul and/or claim the judges utterly incompetent when it comes to judging the best of Irish Web design.

Clients beware!

Homewise – 1 error 46 warnings – a very ordinary site.
Moviestar – 0 errors 91 warnings – another very ordinary site.
Onlinetradesmen – 2 errors 201 warnings – I would be ashamed if this were one of mine!
Sellityourself – 0 errors 127 warnings – Again a very ordinary [and rather cluttered] design.

I can’t see anything special about any of them? What am I missing?

P.S. Figures above from HTML Validator in Firefox

The time to make a few moves isn’t the new year, it’s now as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve called up and asked the Golden Spiders judges for a de-briefing/rationale as to why http://www.huntforproperty.ie didn’t make the shorlist based on the criteria they set out – design, innovation, content, navigation, technology, functionality, interactivity and easy of use. I wonder to Web standards and accessibility fall under ‘technology’? If so, falling at the first hurdle should mean not making the shortlist… but at least 4 out of the 8 sites fail miserably.

The web industry in this country is run by suits who take advantage of uneducated clients and literally steal their money. And that has to stop today.

Seriously though, I imagine that some of the driving force behind this is the realisation of SEO and the *belief* that compliant code helps with SEO.

The heating of the browser wars must also be playing a part. The new iterations are supporting more standards and people are twigging this more and more.

The other reason I can imagine is the move toward mobile platforms and the greater need for compliant xhtml for mobile browsers.

Of course the repercussions of your site breaking must also be in play *glances over at Enterprise Ireland*.

Interestingly, the big boys of the industry are concerned somewhat about web standards. I’ve been hired by one of the big companies you’ve named above to train their guys to use CSS/XHTML etc. I wonder what the driving force behind this new interest is?

I entered a site for my client as best newcomer for 2006 and it hasn’t been shortlisted – http://www.huntforproperty.ie. Now I’ll be the first to admit that it’s got its shortcomings when it comes to accessibility but we’ve gone some way to ensuring that the markup is somewhat decent and we intend to improve it over the next few months.

However, when you compare it to some of the sites that have been beaten it to the shortlist…
http://www.homewise.ie
http://www.moviestar.ie
http://www.onlinetradesmen.ie
http://www.sellityourself.ie
…you can see that the judges clearly don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Then again, Hunt For Property makes a fairly sinister challenge to myHome and Daft so perhaps the judges (The Fallon Brothers and Jim Miley) know EXACTLY what they’re doing

I’m sickened to be honest. And I’ll be getting an explanation as to why the 100 euro entry fee was spent on an incompetent judiciary.

Or is it just sour grapes?

The sites that they have “developed” for their unfortunate clients don’t come out any better.

What does this say, not only for the non-existent standards in so called professional design companies, but for the quality of the Golden Spider Awards?

Unfortunately the public think that the Golden Spiders indicate the Rolls Royces of design companies. They don’t. They are actually rewarding shabby coding and low standards. Something should seriously be done about them.

I’m hoping, beyond hope, that the Golden Spiders this year finally cops itself on and the real talent in the Irish web industry is finally given the accredation that it deserves. But I won’t hold my breath again.

It’s already written out in my pad. That and a few others that I have been thinking about.

Lots on (thank God :)) but hope to get a fair bit up on the site before Sunday.

Thanks for the comment.

@Ricardo – you might be right

You hit the nail on the head there Justin. While SEM and SEO is now personally my main field, our site does not advertise that service (Directly). A design company should be a design company. Not a “Jack of all trades one stop shop”. In the online business world today, SEO and Web Design development are two very different disciplines and should be treated that way.

Richard, your post on the Enterprise Ireland mailing list (Yes, I’m still a lurker!) was spot on. I think you should write a dedicated post on it.

I’m up against a competitor for a contract at the moment. No names, no pack-drill. The competitor’s site has 118 errors [including no doctype!!], and they are always bragging about how hot they are.