How to Fail at Making a Website
Failing at developing a website is not difficult. Many people manage it without even trying. For some, however, a broken website is an effort, be they ever so amateur. So, here are some tips to get you started:
Don't test in multiple browsers.
So, up until now you've been developing only in your favourite browser. It's time to test your site in other browsers, right? Wrong! That would increase your site's availability to the audience, something to be avoided at all costs. If you've got time to be testing in other browsers, you could be more profitably spending it downloading animated "under construction" GIFs off the internet.
Include as much advertising as possible.
Advertising brings you revenue, so the more advertising you've got, the higher your income. It's simple math. If one advertisment on your site nets you $20 a month, then logically, 50 adverts on your site will net you $1000 a month. So what if your visitors have trouble finding your actual content, or if they're constantly being distracted by the flashing viagra ads, the advertisers are the source of your income, not your users.
Implement animation.
If an object on your site isn't animated, you're not trying hard enough. This is a little subtle, but the payoff is a certain amount of distress from your users as they find it difficult to concentrate on your content. Note: The animation should be independent of the user's actions, if the user is interacting with the site, they're not reading the content. They can't be distracted from the content if they're not paying attention to it in the first place.
Remove proper punctuation.
This doesn't exactly fall under the domain of web development, but it's fairly easy to implement. Replace all capital letters with lower-case ones and remove every comma and most of the full-stops. For extra marks, add a couple of hyphens into words that don't require them.
Break some images.
A broken image is one of the most common and easily recognized signs of a broken site. Make sure to give the broken image a width and height when it's within the content, so that the it breaks the flow of text and really catches the eye. Alternatively, if it affects the structure of the site, neglect to add a width and height, so that the site is subtly (or not so subtly) messed up.
And there you have it. If you follow these instructions, you'll be well on your way to a site which is unusable by even the most avid viewer. There are other improvements you can make to your site, such as page widths that are too large for the average screen resolution, broken hyperlinks, clashing colours and a thousand other small tweaks to get the maximum kludge into your site, but they're too many to list here. For more ideas, I'd suggest a visit to Yvette's Bridal Formal it should prove illuminating.
(Edit: This site is no longer on the web, so the link takes you to the Wayback Machine's archived version. Yes, that's right, your horrible sites are going to be preserved forever.)