Five Websites of Awesome

First of we have Destructoid, a blog dedicated to gaming. Like most game blogs, it has a simple design. The stories get loaded in, and the new ones get placed on top, pushing the rest down. It is a design that is stories, simple, and works very well. I am also a fan of the general theme of the site.

On the other hand, we have Kotaku, another gaming blog that is under the Gawker brand of lifestyle blogs (other blogs include io9, a blog dedicated to sci-fi and fantasty, and Gizmodo, a blog dedicated to gadgets). The problem here is that, until a few weeks ago, Kotaku had the same blog style layout that Destructoid had, but then they decided to try out the new layout you see now, and it is quite horrid. Their are two many frames, some don't load all the way, and it's just generally confusing. I understand trying to innovate, but breaking something that worked so well just isn't a very good idea.

Next we have Reddit, which is currently the website to beat in term of Social News sites. A Social News site is basically any site that shares links to other websites, and has comments on those links built into Reddit itself, letting people have a discussion about said link, be it a picture, video, or link to a whole other website. It's simple, text based, and very easy to use.

Next, we have a message board website, called GameFAQs. This website is just about as old as dirt now. Founded way back in 1998, the overall design hasn't changed that much. The most major redesign came when the site was purchased wholesale by gaming news giant Gamespot, which now duplicates the GameFAQs message boards in it's own site, with it's own layout, while still allowing GameFAQs to keep it's own design on it's side. It's a bit of technical wizardry that worked for everyone.

Lastly, we have the web-comic Questionable Content (don't worry about the name, there really isn't any questionable content in there). This is another standard design that works well and doesn't really need much dressing up. For most web-comics, the central fixture is always going to be the comic, and thus the focus. Basically, all most web comic artists do is gussy up the back end, making it more functional. This site in general has one of my favorites, wherein if you are ever browsing the back catalog, whenever you click on the comic proper, it turns the page to the next strip. Extremely simple, but extremely functional.