Much has been written and said about the latest freesheet to hit the capital: The London Weekly and its shoddy attempts at journalism. Not to mention the terrible print design, which student papers can do better (students aged 11).

But I think it’s about time we heaped some criticism on the website too. In fact it is so bad that it *has* to be a joke. That or it is made by aliens who have come to earth and grasped the basic things they need to do without actually understanding what the hell they’re doing.

But whether or not it is a hoax, here are a few key pointers that this site nicely illustrates regardless:

1. Use of images. Make sure you crop off the head of the person you are meant to be focusing on. No-one will really notice, especially if they have tits. Use the most pixilated image possible so it looks as if you are perving on that person through frosted glass (good effect if it is Cheryl Cole). And where possible completely fuck up the proportions so people’s faces go all stretchy and funny. Haha!

2. Links. Definitely don’t make the headline or the teaser image associated with a story clickable through to the story page. This might scare people. Make sure they really want to go to the story page by ONLY making the ‘read more’ button selectable. Because only then you can be sure they really do want to read more.

3. Navigation. Clicking on a top level nav item certainly shouldn’t take the user anywhere. Make them have to decide further by offering more options in a dropdown. Further tips: basketball should be the second most popular choice under sport (the people of London can’t get enough of it) and make sure any idiot who clicks anything to do with books is met with a blank page (this is a classic joke).

4. Repetitive footers. Don’t have one footer, when you can have three. Separate, different looking modules. All stuffed with the same content. Because you never know which one people might want to click. Some people prefer links in modules, some prefer links on a white background, some prefer grey. If possible have more than three options for the same content. You can never be too sure.

5. One big paragraph. A real time-saving tip this: just copy-paste your story content from somewhere else and leave it all in one big paragraph. People find this comforting on the eyes and really easy to read – like one long train of thought.

Good luck making your new website guys! Let us know if you have any other great tips!

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