Guys, come on guys. Sure OP comes off as judgemental, but he does have a point. If I'm trying to sell somebody on these ideas, somebody who may be inherently very skeptical, I'll have a way easier time opening their eyes by sending them to a site that at the very least is streamlined and remotely up-to-date with links and such. It by no means has to be pretty. But user friendly is kinda nice don't yah think?

And like OP says, to go from trainwreck to at least functional is 10-30 minutes out of the hosts day. Is that really so much to ask?

To the uninitiated, perception is reality. Like it or not, people judge books by their covers. Sucks I know, but we want to get this type of info in the heads of as many people as possible right? Why not make it a tad easier?

[deleted]

Drupal is slow, joomla is bloatware, either of those, with a little popularity, could easily bring down a host. Wordpress with a streamline theme is much better than either.

Just stating this from a "Worked in the industry" standpoint.

e107 CMS, best of the free CMS.

Haven't dealt with it much, which is probably a good sign.

My guess, self made websites when the web started getting popular for home use, with little upgrading since. The reason: these people are not web designers, their passions lie with their theories and researching them as well as a need to share, hence the websites. I can imagine having long term beliefs and suddenly the internet is connecting everyone, damn that sounds like an awesome way to get word out and maybe find others, but you gotta remember not everyone cares or is up-to-date themselves on web design, or have time to tweek a long working website. I have also noticed it and it made me question or assume things about the information contained, but only when the content was poor as well. However I always just thought it made sense that they were home made websites, like really home made, like went to borders (when they still existed) and bought a book to follow along with and make an anglefire site. Perhaps they've since got their own domain but think about what motivation someone with a site like this would need to upgrade it and get some Helvetica and rounded squares all over the place, make it shiny, why bother as long as it works is my guess. Yes, it is easy to make a wordpress, but it wasn't around 10 years ago.

Im pretty sure that as a rule, the quality of the website is inversely proportional to how outlandish the theory is.

Here is a website that doesn't fit your rule.

A agree there are possibly exceptions to the rule, but it's overall fairly accurate.

omg, html nazis ;)

<center> </center>

PLEASE

They all look like this

[deleted]

better, but should drop the rounded corners :)

I think it's interesting that people are so concerned with style over content/substance. Slick CNN/Fox site filled with outright propaganda vs interested conspiracy theorists with lack of funds to put you into a style coma.

Agreed, but one can make a basic Wordpress site with native theme in 2 minutes, why bother with producing 50 html pages and linking them manually? The problem is not with the design so much as for comfortably readable text, navigation and dead links. Also they almost by rule lack a decent search and archive organization.

This. Pretty is not the issue. Most of these sites being functionally retarted is the issue.

You found yourself a new job. Alex Jones had a crappy web design and a terrible page management until Kurt Nimmo, I think it was him, called him up and offered his help to redesign his sites. They are running like this a few years now.

So if you want a crappy website with nice content changed just called them up and offer your valuable help. For instance you could install them said wordpress blog system with all the features they need plus help them when they get attacked by script kiddies who happen to exploit vulnerabilities in the rather common wordpress blogs.

I think some people are not that tuned into the web design process. I am always surprised about that as well, and sometimes even meet people much younger than myself & they have no idea about any aspect of WP or templating. I don't rule out that the sites are made to look crazy to dissuade people from considering the possibility of a conspiracy.

My point would be.... slickness should make us wary just as much as bad design when considering credibility.

Because if you are trying to get people to respect you, don't look all janky. Would you go into a "doctors office" to get a checkup from the side of a guys van? Even if he proved to you he was an MD? FUCK NO. Its all about appearances

Because if you are trying to get people to respect you, don't look all janky. Would you go into a "doctors office" to get a checkup from the side of a guys van? Even if he proved to you he was an MD? FUCK NO. Its all about appearances

I agree to a certain degree, but we are talking about people who are to a large extent interested in this stuff as hobby. I also think those type of 'bad design' websites could be used as deterrent used to dissuade people from taking the information as a credible source.

It's all about appearance only if you lack the ability to effectively discern the credible details, hence your use of 'Janky'.

BTW people in third world countries get their health care from the side of a van all of time by doctors who have graduated from the top medical schools around the world. I don't think they have a hard time being convinced. Suddenly because it's in the US/Canada it becomes scary?

It's not a rational thought process.

It is obvious, they are full of shit.

My main complaint in this area is making anyone interested in linking to their content seem goofy by the over addition of sound effects and over reaching visual displays.

It's like too much makeup and perfume.

I don't care what they look like, only if they're worth reading.

Sometimes it's barely readable.

http://www.wildboar.net/multilingual/easterneuropean/russian/literature/articles/whofinanced/whofinancedleninandtrotsky.html

Can not see any problem with that site. I can read it. Just make you browser window smaller in width and do not read it an full screen mode. Apart from one image it is even reponsive and can be read with mobile devices.

May get buried/ may not get seen/ may get banned, idk the rules of this. But if you want a website, and lack the funds. I will design one for you, well within a meager budget and trust me it will be nice. I am a seasoned professional in the business. I believe, unfortunately, we live in a society where image is everything. I too have seen many informational websites, that will get over looked/ and or laughed at because of the image. The info is great, but the image is wrong. So, as I drink some beer tonight, I open the door to my fellow truth seekers. I'd accept paypal, bit coins, barter don't matter, just trying to help, it's really my calling, that's why I am making the offer. PM me if you're interested and we can discuss :) .

You should make a better version of reddit.

Because they are all bullshit

[deleted]

O boy.

Or they don't trust anyone with their "sensitive" information and therefore make a website themselves in MS Word?

You nailed it with this.

FYI, there is no such thing as "free energy", but there exist cheap energy. Hopefully one of the numerous nuclear fusion reactor experiments in the world will succeed. Because then we'll have very cheap and clean energy.

Not counting maintenance (as it remains a constant no matter what system of energy gathering you use), wind energy, tidal energy, and geothermal energy are just three off of my head that are free. Though, nuclear fusion does look rather promising.

Maintenance is not constant. They are far from free, you must build the devices, administration, transport them to the right location etc... My point is that something can become very cheap, but never free! Thinking that things are free is Marxist bullshit.

I think the implied meaning of free is in what it costs to the environment. Obviously, you can't simply "get" energy, you have to generate it. There will always be an overhead. You'll always need engineers to maintain your plant, etc etc. A term like "free energy" isn't supposed to be taken literally, it's a buzzword.

I know, but people tend to get the wrong idea about how things work. For instance, socialists often think it is better to have a large government because then everything will be "free" and everything will be just great. I mean, what could go wrong... right?

I try not to go all in on any single form of government. For instance, our police force, education system, library and fire rescue teams are all socialist style. If it were pure capitalism, you'd have to purchase contracts in order to have response from rescue teams. It's probably right to say that every system of government is doomed to failure. Our representative republic has been far from perfect, and has decayed in the same fashion as every other democratic capitalism before it. Now if you want to talk about something new, how about totally removing the monetary system?

Removing the monetary system would not work today, perhaps in the future.

Do you mean cold fusion?

Not necessarily. There appear to be several good canididates for creating fusion where you make a lot more energy than you put in.

I'd love to hear the other candidates if you have sources to share. Honestly, I don't really know much about the topic, but I stumbled across that cold fusion video a few weeks back.

Nope, no such thing as free energy, you're right. We should stop calling it that. Over unity is a much better term, or zero-point. It's coming from somewhere or something that we haven't previously documented. That doesn't mean 'free'.

Honestly it's physically impossible for something to be over unity, the entire universe is slowly cooling and losing energy, how do we expect to build something that goes against the very nature of the universe.

What are "over unity and zero-point"?

It is quite normal, and just as you cannot judge a book by it's cover, you cannot judge a web-page by it's style (or lack of).

A corporate website costs tens and even hundreds of thousand dollars, is maintained by teams of developpers and content admins.

A small non-profit organisation does not have these ressources.

Another good example of an awesome site with totally crap design> http://davesweb.cnchost.com/index.html

Have qood one.

Using wordpress does not cost a giant budget. It doesn't require a team. It can be learned in an evening.

where?

Where to what? Can it be learned in an evening? Google wordpress tutorial and spend the next 5 hours reading. Fuck, you don't even need 5 hours to get a half decent site up.

I'm a full-time web designer. I actually tried emailing a couple of guests I heard on C2CAM after visiting their junk sites. I offered to redesign their sites at cost (no profit). No reply. I tried emailing again, offering to redo the sites for FREE.

Still no reply. Apparently, they just do not give a shit.

Every once in a while, I hear a guest that says, "We just re-did our site. It's beautiful." I go to check. Same shitty layout, just some new images. :P

The concept of content is king is new to some. Some other prefer they better be judged by their ideas and their opinion and not by surperficial design choices that have no connection to their ability to share information. At least they assume that people concerned enough to look behind the first impression would not judge them by their web design, because that is simply not thie first priority.

On the other side I would assume that an agency that poses as real conspiracy theorist would like to seem "real" by emulating that amateurish website design that was common way back, when the internet startet and was not yet crowded with shiny commercial websites we are used to see nowadays.

The issue I have with many, if not most, of the conspiracy websites is that they look as if you walked into a room and someone started screaming at you, and I don't like being screamed at.

It's a shame because I believe the authors want to share information they believe is important, but the design of their pages - and quite often, the language they use - makes it all look like the ravings of lunatics.

Haha - great topic man - this is so true. I'm a web designer & developer and it baffles me how websites like this still exist... although that just means more clients for me :)

You can throw up a cheap Wordpress template in about 30 minutes that looks better than any of these sites (including abovetopsecret.com) - whoever threw that one in the mix.

Bad websites = lazy.

Just because a web site is pretty or nicely designed does not mean its the truth either. Just like a scam artist decked out in nice threads is still can scam something or someone.

Take DrudgeReport.com for example. Its been the same design since Matt started 15 years ago. Its the most visited site on the Internet and fastest page views ever! They show the stats / visit right on the page.

wordpress, is so full of security holes that my pitbull could tunnel into it. jesus. Im going to take a shot in the dark and say that they probably build it themselfs to save money and they probably dont know anything about coding. but ur over thinking it buddy/pal. ANYWAY look up paracas, I apologize in advanced for blowing your mind.

I'm honestly never going to understand the obsession some people have with web design.

Is it readable? Good. Everything else is subjective.

Personally, I see someone using Wordpress I think that's unusable. I hate navigating a Wordpress site. Oh, organized by date posted? Yeah, so convenient. I'd rather a wiki site.

Imagine you spend decades of your life researching these topics, and spent most of your money on the effort. You basically live off ramen noodles, but you have amassed a wealth of data on "conspiratorial" topics.

You really want to get this information out to the public, but no one will publish it, and you don't have the money to hire some thick-framed glasses-wearing hipster from some design shop to craft you a state of the art website.

What do you do? You do a crash course on HTML, and start getting your information uploaded.

The result? People look at the low design quality and their first impression is they must be full of shit cause the site looks sketchy.

Nice logic, idiots.

Edit: NTM many of these sites have been sitting on the net for years.

Like I said, we are in 2014 now, you also have thousands of crash courses for Wordpress and they are especially useful for those who don't know anything about html, you need 3 logins 10 minutes of your time and BOOM you published your first article.. isnt that good logic?

The truth does not need to be marketed by nicely designed websites. I remember reading this collection of stories/news/articles that were pulled from a BBS, and they're just a bunch of numerically named .txt files archived in a .zip file. It was a blast. Cant find the exact pack, but here are some others: http://textfiles.com/directory.html

I think its nice that people put the information out, no matter in what format. Information should be free, and we shouldn't judge it on its looks.

It's a red herring, pointing out the low quality of a "design" instead of tackling the content presented therein.

Herre herre!

What do you think of 911Blogger.com?

Because the artists are all liberals.

Designing a website, especially a dynamic one, is NOT easy. You need money, resources, and time. Things most UFO researchers do not have.

http://projectcamelotportal.com/

Not too bad there.

The way Kerry Cassidy (Project Camelot) explains it is this: They don't have any money. They can't afford web design, they can't afford nice cameras and sound equipment. All the money goes to traveling and setting up meetings with Whistleblowers. No one is cataloging UFO whistleblowers to make money, or be famous, or have a nice website and nice equipment. They do it because they truly believe they are serving humanity by disclosing the truth.

This is a new account, this is literally the guys first post (with 3 comments made after posting this) um....ok.

however, I do agree with the topic at hand....but everything about this feels suspicious in some manner.

On reddit maybe, but online since 1994, what does this have to do with anything? Just wanted to see if anyone else feels the pain navigating an unreadable site while searching for good information, that's all.

What the hell is suspicious about letting people know their websites look like shit and will never be taken seriously in their current state? If anything, it's helpful.

The suspicious part was that it was his first and only post...."let me sign up to reddit just to post this"

I agree with your comment. Young account and posting in this sub! Very suspicious.

conspiracy freaks

This part made me look at your account. Your account confirms what I think of you.

Edit: Yea I'm doubling down. This guy has a two month old account with one post previous to this one. He's pointing at something that's about as superficial as can be especially when you consider the fact that web design is not the priority of researchers and that truly great web design costs money. He just so happens to sneak in a ridiculous insult in there by calling people "conspiracy freaks" based on the fact that their web design isn't up to his standards. That's not cool, that's stupid.

I've actually read plenty about this subject. I've read books, I've gone through UFO case files to read up on the most compelling cases, and I never had any trouble. But this guy doesn't talk about the actual information, he complains that the "crazy conspiracy" websites are hard to navigate. What makes them crazy? Because you can't navigate their website? Really?

Seriously, yerbus, what's with your use of the words "freaks" and "crazy"? The only complaint you have is with the layout of their website, is that really it? Bad layout means you are a freak?

Relax, I'm online since 1994 and I have seen shit, freaks and crazy might be too harsh, but I meant it all with their website functionality in mind and not the content. While content might be good and interesting, the functionality of the site is a pain for a reader. If someone appears in a TV interview and suggests to see his website, while his information is good, he might deter the readers immediately by the lack of readability, dead links and poor navigation.

but I meant it all with their website functionality in mind and not the content.

Bullshit.

WTF is wrong with these conspiracy freaks!!!

You specifically said conspiracy freaks. Not poor webdesign freaks. Conspiracy freaks. What is it about their conspiracy and the evidence they use to back up their claim that make them freaks?

Why all these crazy conspiracy, UFO and free energy websites have such crappy web design?

Again, crazy conspiracy. But you failed to dedicate one single sentence in your name calling rant to explain why they are freaks and why they are crazy. You just went ahead and called them freaks and crazy. Again, as someone who's spent the time to do the reading and look into the backgrounds of the sources, it's incredibly disrespectful for you to use these blanket insults.

If your objective truly was to strictly criticize the web layout, you would have done that. But you arbitrarily inject these loaded insults into your rant that are idiotic. And the fact your account is 2 months old with a single post on it before this makes this look even more ridiculous.

See what I mean? Admit it, some are freaks and crazy, just because they connect two words and make the basis of their crazy conspiracy theory :)

No, that's not how you call them out. You call out the bullshit when you see it. You don't overgeneralize with blanket terms that insults everyone who looks into conspiracies. Try doing that sometimes.

point taken, I will watch my wording next time..

omg, html nazis ;)

e107 CMS, best of the free CMS.

See what I mean? Admit it, some are freaks and crazy, just because they connect two words and make the basis of their crazy conspiracy theory :)