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Arab web sucks!

By: Qwaider

On:Friday, October 23, 2009 9:00:40 AM
In:Thoughts
Viewed: (7774) times

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Today, I was going through the "guts" of a few Arab sites. I came to a sad realization. Our websites SUCK so badly it's not even funny!

I'm not going to point to these sites, but it's enough to say that if you have a blog on Wordpress, or Blogspot. Your blog is MORE ADVANCED than many government run and even private owned sites in the Arab world.

It really gave me a sad, bitter taste in my mouth!

Surprisingly, one good site, was Petra news Agency. The site is really good. Modern and compliant for the most part. Others, were not as good. Some had half the page (if not more) in commented out text.

All in all most sites were in horrible state. They would require a lot of work to bring them out from a pre-year 2000 era web engines and into the new world.

I'm not talking about the "Web design" since many people use that term pretty loosely. I personally don't care that much about the visual part of the site. It's the guts that matter most to me. These sites had the guts of a 1960 Korean car in a body of a 1980's Mercedes Laff.

What do you think it would take to get these sites off their antique websites? A royal decree?

Memories....

#1
ayman sarhan
Said
On: 10/23/2009 2:33:45 PM
SpamScore=[2]

this exactly why i started a Facebook page [Close this site or burst حمله لإغلاق بعض المواقع المتخلفه ]
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=135860813078

#2
Qwaider
Said
On: 10/23/2009 5:43:30 PM
SpamScore=[-42.21]

Thanks for your comment Ayman. You know, you have EVERY RIGHT to demand something like that. Sites need to "evolve" and come of age or simple go extinct!

#3
lima
Said
On: 10/23/2009 7:35:32 PM
SpamScore=[1]

yes, including this site...lol

#4
Qwaider
Said
On: 10/23/2009 7:52:57 PM
SpamScore=[-40.76]

LOL Lima ... But what makes you think so? This site employs some technologies that you will not see anywhere else. Not even on the prestigious wordpress. So feedback :)

#5
lima
Said
On: 10/23/2009 8:25:32 PM
SpamScore=[-0.02]

The site is extremely overcrowded, and looks very unorganized, a little simplicity in the design wouldn't hurt.
My comment was about the interface, not the underlying technologies, but other than that, the content is great.

#6
Qwaider
Said
On: 10/23/2009 8:52:56 PM
SpamScore=[-40.78]

Lima, I am talking about the "guts" the underlying technologies. I explicitly mention that I'm not talking about the visual aesthetics or visual appeal of the site for two reasons. First, I'm not an expert in that domain. Second because they're subjective matters.
However, the "guts" or the engine itself and how it behaves are not very subjective. Things either work right, or not. They are compliant or not. It's binary like that.
Hope this clears my points a little bit more

But thanks for the feedback on the design of the site. I don't disagree, I'm just one of those people who like to have everything close to them, right where they expect them to be :)

#7
Rula A.
Said
On: 10/24/2009 12:13:33 PM
SpamScore=[1.48]

I always wondered that why we -Arabs- don’t have a web site that contain all Arabic movies! Such as
http://movies.yahoo.com
www.imdb.com .. And many else!!
It would be fascinating to have one like these for our own movies!

#8
KJ
Said
On: 10/24/2009 1:46:55 PM
SpamScore=[-7.00000000000001E-02]

I believe the main issue at hand is the level of awareness of the IT-guys or whoever is the product owner of said sites. As long as it's functioning within marginally acceptable levels and they get the approval they don't really care about the guts. I applied for a job in a company that creates websites (front and back end) and when they showed me some of their stuff I was pretty surprised how much hard code is put into the engine - even with my extremely limited knowledge of how the web works I could guess they're following the "as long as customer pays and signs" approach to delivery (which also was the approach in my ex-company even though it was international)

#9
Qwaider
Said
On: 10/24/2009 9:18:29 PM
SpamScore=[-42.25]

@Rola
You know, you're right, I'm not sure why we don't have something like that. A movie wiki or some sort. There might be some but I'm not aware of it.

@KJ
It's sad, isn't it? Especially when it's as you said "Hard-coded" which means, it's a lot of work to adapt to other things. It's sad to see sites follow such approaches.
By the way, even sites like Maktoob, serve crappy code. Not to insult the guys or anything. I love them to death. But their engines are crap.

#10
jessyz
Said
On: 10/25/2009 9:02:39 AM
SpamScore=[0.36]

You didn't even mention the security holes. Unfortunately the people building these sites are usually just trying to sell something that looks good on the outside because the person approving doesn't really understand or even know what they're getting. Not to mention that working with governments is really stressful because you get this "mas2ool" who has all of these wants which are either wrong or ugly. I worked for a company that flat out refused any government contracts because they knew they would not be able to produce good quality work.

#11
Qwaider
Said
On: 10/25/2009 9:44:30 AM
SpamScore=[-42.29]

Oh Jessyz, don't get me started on that! But the cool part is that government sites EVERYWHERE suck! From the US to Mozambique! They're all full of crap anyway. It's sad to see this trend ongoing in business sites around the Arab world

#12
Proremovals Peter
Said
On: 3/24/2010 2:01:39 AM
SpamScore=[1]

I think that it funny

#13
Mike Yagi
Said
On: 9/11/2012 4:21:12 PM
SpamScore=[1.8]

Your very own blog is an over exaggerated example of a terrible website.

It's for the very first time since years I have my browser to crash and it's your terribly coded blog behind it.

Stop preaching and do something more useful to this pile of crap blog.