The ugly side of the Web Awards

Nominations for the Web Awards, this year sponsored by Realex Fire, close tomorrow, but there is one category that companies may have mixed feelings about winning – ugliest website.

The award has been added "as a balance to the most beautiful category", according to founder and organiser Damien Mulley, and the prize is a useful €4,500 worth of web development work from V7.ie.

Cringe
Sadly, the public can't put forward their most hated site for the award, as it's the only category of the 29 where nominations must come from the company itself.

Or, as the call for entries puts it, “only website owners can submit to this category or we may get sued”.

So far, company owners haven't been racing to admit they cringe when their website takes an age to load and/or pays stylistic homage to the 1990s, and the category is one of a small number where nominations have been slow to pour in.

Overall, there have been a healthy 450-plus nominations across the various categories, with more than 60 companies set to compete for the best SME/small business website.

Best web-only publication, last year won by the journal.ie, will be contested again this year, but in a sign of the times there’s a new award for best daily web-only publication that will give sites such as broad sheet.ie, joe.ie and her.ie the opportunity to fight it out.

Nominations for the free-to-enter awards can be made at webawards.ie.