The movie world has its Oscars, the television industry its Emmys and its Logiesââ,¬"even the Internet industry rewards the best Web sites with prestigious Webby awards. Now get ready for the Muddiesââ,¬"awards to recognise/expose the World Wide Web's ugliest and most useless sites.

Last month the second annual NetStudio Mud Brick Awards were conducted and -winners" chosen from a field of not so distinguished finalists. Judges, including our own Jim Seymour and John C. Dvorak, scoured a list of finalists that included companies such as Pizza Hut (www.pizzahut.com) and Southwest Airlines (www.southwest.com). Winners were awarded as follows: Corporate: Quaker Oats (www. quakeroats.com), Small to Mid-Sized Business: GEM Hosting (www. hostbiz.com), Government: The State of Texas (www.state.tx.us). These sites are not pleasant to look atââ,¬"but they're well worth studying if you ever wonder what a Web site should not look like!

The Muddies are a lot of funââ,¬"and companies presented with a Mud Brick Award generally take the light-hearted criticism quite well (though I've never come across winners who've gone out of their way to announce their victory!). Despite the humourous nature of the Awards, they were devised by Web software developer NetStudio as a means to expose unprofessional-looking Web sites, -especially those of big businesses who should know better," says CEO of NetStudio, Manish Vij.

Last month, leading up to the Muddy Awards, I brought up the subject of bad-looking Web sites and what a disservice their creators where doing for the integrity and success of the site's content. But it's one thing to complain about the look of certain Web sites and another to actually take the time to make your own. Last month I said I'd start building my own site using IXLA's Web Easy software. Well, the site is up, it is at http://babylon5.acmecity.com/shadow/105. Visit and tell me whether the site looks any better than the Muddy Award winners.

Web Easy was as simple to use as can be, and I can honestly recommend new users get a copy before embarking on a Web site project. Experienced users though, or those who want a fairly high level of creative control over their site should probably look elsewhere. The program's interface is easy to work with and intuitive, but the program lacks advanced tools such as a spell checker and image mapper. The program also recommends images and text not overlap each other on a page, lest the page be too slow to download. This was a limitation I could not abide by, hence a source of potential problems for visitors with slow connections.

You will note that my Web address is a little complex. My site is hosted by AcmeCityââ,¬"a fun Warner Brothers site that gives you 20MB of free storage space. As convenient as the AcmeCity site is, my next step is to get a more personal address. Should I decide to expand my humble online art gallery, I'd do what every small business site should be consideringââ,¬"looking for a relevant domain name for my company. Something like www.artgallery.com.au or www.paintings.com.au would not only look attractive and professional, they'd be obvious choices for people interested in those topics as well as being easy to remember and revisit. After all, a URL can be as important to an online store as a physical address is to normal shops. If you're in search of a cool personal URL, something like www.annaraciti.com.au that would look great on your business cards or resume, you could try Canadian company MailBank (www.mailbank.com) A MailBank address in the form www.firstname.lastname.com costs only US$19.95 to set up and US$4.95 per year thereafter. The company has bought the rights to over ten thousand common surnames to -sub-let"ââ,¬"mine's not there. . . but yours could be. You also get your own personalised e-mail address of the type firstname@lastname.com. The only real drawback to this service is that it's rather complex for new users. Don't expect to have your hand held when you're FTPing your contents onto your new URL, there are no wizards or user friendly interfaces to help you here.

If you're not confident setting up a URL on your own or if you're in business and would rather someone else handle the dirty work, you can get a company like NetRegistry to do the work for you. They can outfit you with a www.xxx.com.au address for $125 for two years or a www.xxx.au.com address for $50 per year. It'll sure beat being stuck with the default address supplied by your ISP or Web hosting service.

Anna Raciti is the assistant editor of PC Magazine Australia

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