Comments on: Golden Spider Awards – Are These Really Ireland’s Best Websites?

By: Irish Web Awards (and hello Maryrose!) | Search Engine Optimisation & Online Marketing - Red Cardinal

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:04:55 +0000

[...] to be a fresh take on the until-recently stale awards scene. And given that my friends over at the Golden Spiders are a bunch of spammers*, I’m doubly delighted that Damien is taking on the big-boys with [...]

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:54:53 +0000

Jacko

don’t tell me you’re gonna be off selling expensive seats now?

Problem is this is Ireland… Duplicitous… A country where politicians had money ‘resting in their account’ and crying over the evil developers making wealth whilst swigging beer with them at the galway races…

Culture I’m afraid….its not in our nature to pin a badge on someone based on thier work and skill….

We don’t do style or chique….but we sure know how to charge for it! Submit the sites to a real award site online… for the gong…it’d be worth the travel to london or new york.

By: jacko

jacko — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:21:50 +0000

Came across the website purely by accident….that’s the power of search for you !!! But I am intrigued by the debate. While everyone knows that the Golden Spiders are a joke and that they are a money making exercise for some publisher (they sell entries, tables etc etc)..why doesn’t the industry come up with a better alternative?? It is long overdue and I know of tons of good, well crafted Irish-designed websites that are worthy of gongs.

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:46:33 +0000

Peter,
Eoghan McCabe already did over here:
http://www.eoghanmccabe.com/naive-by-design/snubbed-again-by-the-golden-spiders/

By: Peter K

Peter K — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:55:50 +0000

So you going to do a 2007 version?

By: Dave Rooney

Dave Rooney — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 18:08:12 +0000

The Golden Spiders is the biggest joke around! And this year just proved it!

By: Mick Wright

Mick Wright — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:00:39 +0000

Richard,

Excellant work there… I was nominated for one of those in 1997 or 98… I was a novice then and to be honest wondered what all the fuss was about… the answer of course was to make up the numbers so that badges could be stuck on the sites who were gonna win anyway…

Of course nominated for TOP COMMERCIAL in the days of altavista when you could ‘doorway’ your way to bucket loads of visits was pretty simple stuff… and oddly the client site earned more that year through their site than they did through any of their outlets on the high street…

Anyway excellant stuff… keep up the good work, and since I’m finished with my current client site (almost 2 years working on that) I’ll be out there mooching customers in a week or so… no doubt at loggerheads with your good self lol

Mickelodian

By: Did I Say That » Golden spider awards - the next generation

Did I Say That » Golden spider awards - the next generation — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:54:39 +0000

[...] refresh your minds, I direct you to my original post and also this fantastic analysis of the sites in [...]

By: Enzo

Enzo — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:32:39 +0000

Christ, shocking stuff. The respective Irish designers should be ashamed.

Excellent research lads!

By: Improving the Irish Web Design Awards system

Improving the Irish Web Design Awards system — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:14:48 +0000

[...] poor coding and appalling adherence to web standards/accessibility guidelines. Fortunately for us, Red Cardinal have already done a lot of research into the winners for the 2006 Golden Spiders awards. We’ve compressed some of the most [...]

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:48:20 +0000

Robin – you’re just in time for next years serving Thanks for commenting.

Rgds
Richard

By: robin

robin — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:03:30 +0000

I am more than a little late coming to this article but I must say… well done! The quality of sites in Ireland is generally way behind its image as a technology leader. I figure the only thing that will help is if more people hire me… or read this blog!

Cheers!

By: Happy Birthday Red Cardinal | Search Engine Optimisation & Online Marketing Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:00:46 +0000

[...] Golden Spiders – Are These Really Ireland’s Best Websites? – My alternative review of the Golden Spiders. If you want to know how this all started out check [...]

By: TerryG

TerryG — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:43:56 +0000

Richard you cannot help all of the people all of the time but you can help some of the people some of the time. I got a lot out of this and well done for putting this up.

By: eam0

eam0 — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:43:34 +0000

Good study. I remember sitting in a meeting a couple of years ago brainstorming free publicity for a certain venture. Person A: “Enter it in the Golder Spiders! You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to actually win in certain categories.”

Specifically he was talking about public sector categories I think which is so true. I heard lots of ads recently for revenue.ie so I went through the laborious steps of registering. Eventually after receiving two separate codes in the post I managed to log in. I tried to cancel a tax credit I am no longer eligible for. Yeah you guessed it I have to put that in writing and send it to them.

By: Linking at The Story

Linking at The Story — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:35:36 +0000

[...] Old Bitter Balls – Keeling Time Political Quote – Bertie Ahern does a ‘Nixon’ over money scandal Red Cardinal – Golden Spiders – Are These Really Ireland’s Best Websites? Redfly Marketting – DMOZ Submission Guide Ricks Breakfast Blog – A Religious Experience… Ricks Breakfast Blog – Most Extraordinary Day of my Life Skin Flicks – The JC Skinner guide to drinking Stig Online – The most painful 12 miles of my life (and the other 14 were hardly easy) [...]

By: An Important Announcement - Free Consulting for ALL IBA Nominees | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:44:56 +0000

[...] [...]

By: The Cream Starts To Rise, Let the Voting Begin | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 09:45:27 +0000

[...] Red Cardinal – Golden Spiders – Are These Really Ireland’s Best Websites? [...]

By: Blog Awards Voting opens! - Jason Roe Web Design Business. Jason Roe - Web design, Development, SEO Advice

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:43:19 +0000

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By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:32:23 +0000

hi Richard, this may interest you… in 2002 a study of web accessibility was completed by the DCU. I decided to revisit this study and completed an audit of all those original sites

http://www.pvd.ie/article-web-accessibility-in-ireland-2007.html

In addition, I completed 2 further surveys which included:
* An audit of 48 Irish non-profit organisation websites, of which many are focused on supporting the needs of disabled people
* An audit of 87 Irish web design firms and freelance web designers

By: Irish Blog Awards - Who Should I Vote for???

Irish Blog Awards - Who Should I Vote for??? — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:40:39 +0000

[...] Best Blog Post – There have been some good ones, but I think Dave’s explanation of how to get listed in DMOZ would get my vote. That’s not fair on Red Cardinal’s amazing work on the Golden Spiders, however, so you could vote for that instead. [...]

By: Who Said META Tag Optimization Was Dead? | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:31:59 +0000

[...] I swore that I wouldn’t mention those awards again (see, I kept my word ), but this post has led to a rather large amount of traffic. [...]

By: Mojo

Mojo — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:37:56 +0000

A URL would be good, Colm. Unless you can prove that you have any design and/or development experience and can show that you know what you’re talking about, then you’ll just be written off as a troll.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:38:58 +0000

Stuart

Everyone is free and welcome to comment. But I do choose who to respond (or link ) to

Rgds

Richard

By: Stewart Curry

Stewart Curry — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:27:02 +0000

Richard, the bad grammar, lack of url, referral to “yes men” and overall tone leads me to believe you have a troll living in your comments.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:20:56 +0000

Colm

I have basically abstained from responding to you. But you really seem to be missing the woods for the tress. I haven’t been heckling any entity other than the Golden Spiders. Why? because this awards ceremony is picked up in the mainstream media and the public are being duped into believing that the winners are the best websites in Ireland. If you agree with this then I am quite happy to be ‘anal’.

By all means post any better suggestions for educating the public to what a quality website is.

BTW any reason you don’t give your URL?

Rgds

Richard

By: Colm

Colm — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:06:20 +0000

Sorry Mojo, I’m not defending the spiders at all. To be honest, I never bother to check who’s nominated, who’s won, or what c list celebrity presents it.

I just can’t understand how some fanatical standards (or recommendations, which ever you prefer) supporters get so wound up about these awards. If there is truth in what you say that… “It’s been a generally accepted fact for years by the most talented and experienced commercial Web designers and developers in Ireland that the Golden Spiders do not represent the best of Irish websites” then why all the heckling? who CARES about the damn awards!!

By: Mojo

Mojo — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:06:20 +0000

“Someone above mentioned that meeting standards is assumed in most industries – I wonder if it’s pushed in the same hostile manner?”

Not, I’m sure, if those who receive the accolades are actually deserving of them. Which I think is the whole point being made.

You’re clutching at straws here Colm. It’s been a generally accepted fact for years by the most talented and experienced commercial Web designers and developers in Ireland that the Golden Spiders do not represent the best of Irish websites. And those of us who are trying to make a living from this industry, which is littered with clueless cowboys, are quite passionate about its integrity. Sorry if you disagree.

By: Colm

Colm — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:23:40 +0000

Mojo – I don’t get your point about “why I bother to validate my work” – I can tell you that I don’t it to please judges in competitions, or so I can kick off if other designers fail to validate their work. I prefer to encourage rather than heckle designers to adhere to standards.

Someone above mentioned that meeting standards is assumed in most industries – I wonder if it’s pushed in the same hostile manner?

By: Mojo

Mojo — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:57:07 +0000

Colm, with regard to your assetion that it’s “their competition, their rules”; I think you’ll find that they actually have criteria set out for each category and these are being largely ignored. When they ask each entrant to pay €100 then the least they can do is ensure that the judges are 1) competent/qualified enough to judge and 2) unbiased and do not have vested interests in the awards.

You’re saying that the reaction is over the top and that you always ‘validate’ your sites. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you bother.

By: colm

colm — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:06:46 +0000

hello dave – just game across this post today.

why are you all worked up about the spiders anyways – their competition, their rules right? regardless of claims.

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:46:20 +0000

Hello Colm. It appears you are the one that is more concerned. This post is from over a month ago. You seem to be the only one loosing sleep over it now.

You say you code to standards and that we need them. That was not the point. The point was that the cream of the Irish crop were not.

By: Colm

Colm — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:16:23 +0000

how anal are you?! and all your yes men. its hilarious. sure, we need standards, there is absolutely no doubt, and i always validate my work. but whats with the big hullabaloo? you must never get any sleep worring about this stuff. the reaction is so over the top, its amazing!

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:04:08 +0000

Kevin I agree with you whole-heartedly. A site can only be judged to be accessible when it has been put to the test.

To that end the WAI advocate real-life testing as part of the development process and any subsequent accessibility testing procedures.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:51:06 +0000

Good point Stuart, but section 3.2 is a priority 2 guideline in WCAG 1.0.

You could fail 3.2 but still be WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 compliant.

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:50:36 +0000

Stewart – I guess that depends on what you consider accessibility. I consider it to be real world usage of a site and how easy a disabled user can access the information on that site. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that a few validation errors will have no impact on it, whereas some of the CSS standards-compliant methods of image replacement can.

Now, I’m not suggesting ignoring standards by any means, I’m a strong advocate of them, but accessibility and standards don’t go need to go hand in hand and it’s very important to take a pragmatic sensible look at accessibility.

Accessibility meauring tools are useful but only when armed with information and real world knowledge.

By: Stewart Curry

Stewart Curry — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:09:14 +0000

Surely a perfectly accessible site would require valid code, otherwise it fails point 3.2 of the W3C guidleines – Create documents that validate to published formal grammars.

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:05:22 +0000

Cheers for the reply. I understand full testing would be extremely time consuming. Just wanted to point out that the graph is a tad misleading since a perfectly accessible site could be indicated as red by that criteria. I still think it’s an interesting excercise.

I was suggesting that you test the W3C’s site www.w3.org too, to see how it fared. I don’t think it would pass many of those tests, despite being considered, presumably, very well executed from a code POV. It would be useful to see the results of it, at any rate.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:57:11 +0000

Kevin

I agree with what you say, but when you have 128 pages to test it is not possible to use considered methods. My preference would be to test each site thoroughly in a text browser such as Lynx.

I can tell you that a number of accessible websites (i.e. as per automated checks) are extremely poor in terms of contextual awareness of HTML elements (e.g. labels containing 2 inputs).

I’m not too sure I understand your opening suggestion. What exactly do you think should be done?

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:29:48 +0000

Interesting stats, but I’d like you to run w3.org through the same test though for a better comparison. It will fail many of those tests too.

While standards are good this is a very brute force method of testing and doesn’t allow for considered analysis. Many sites that are valid may be poorly marked up and many sites that are invalid may be doing so in a perfectly sensible manner. That issue is even more important in accessibilitity issues, where context is important and automated tool cannot evaluate true accessibility.

Many of the sites in the Golden Spider awards are pretty poor. Most industries have their various token awards that noone takes seriously. The Irish magazine industry has numerious awards ceremonies that are dubious at best.

Personally, I think people shouldjust forget about the Golden Spiders and get on with producing good work.

By: Better Websites | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Better Websites | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:36:34 +0000

[...] After testing the Golden Spiders nominees, I thought it might be helpful to detail the top coding problems that ‘broke’ so many of the websites considered to be Ireland’s best. [...]

By: Stewart Curry

Stewart Curry — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:25:40 +0000

Well done and thanks for doing all this research – meeting standards is assumed in most industries, so why not ours? On a sidenote, for some reason most people when talking about standards seem to be using the example of plumbers in this debate – must be because the internet is basically a series of tubes

By: +Broadcast » Blog Archive » Golden Spiders - Tarnished?

+Broadcast » Blog Archive » Golden Spiders - Tarnished? — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:00:36 +0000

[...] >>Golden Spiders Nominees Validation Results [...]

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:24:59 +0000

Richard. Fair play to you putting in all the research and effort that the panel SHOULD have done (In my opinion) in the first place.

6 sites out of the entire lot. 6. That is a disgrace and is setting the Irish Internet sector back rather than helping it grow.

I really enjoyed your final analysis piece. That encapsulates everything you were trying to show. It appears that the goldenspiders is clearly not about what they are making it out to be.

By: Mojo

Mojo — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:31:51 +0000

Excellent research, Richard. It would certainly be nice for the wider media to take note. This time next year it would be wonderful if, as a result, clients knew what to look for when it comes to standards, accessibility, SEO, etc. and were more wary of those that they commission to design and develop their website(s).