Then you’ll love the MICU’s new website.

Wait, let’s back up a step. The Montreal Island Citizens’ Union, Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s party, has changed its far-too-long name to simply “Union Montreal”, and has a new 70s-throwback logo.

The big part of this is the party’s new website, which still carries the micu.ca domain. And that’s just the start of its problems:

• The mayor’s face appears on its homepage at least seven different times. I realize he’s the centre of the party and all, but isn’t this just a bit of overkill?
• What used to be a cardinal rule of web design: Don’t start playing audio until you’ve been asked to, is broken. So those of us who forgot to mute our audio will hear Tremblay welcoming us to the party’s new website. (Just what does that do for us anyway? And won’t anyone who wants to consult the site on a regular basis get fed up of that pretty quickly?)
• “Arrondissements”, which is rightly plural, becomes the incorrect “Borough” in English. Below that it says “to acess your borough”. Further down you see the incorrect “Maisonneuve Street” instead of “De Maisonneuve Blvd.” You’d think they could hire a proofreader.
• Video clips are provided with no captions whatsoever, leaving us to guess based on a tiny screen capture what they’re all about.
• The site is entirely unusable if style sheets are removed. It is far too heavily dependent on Flash and images.
• The “news” section hasn’t been updated in a year and a half.
• The “cultural communities” and “youth”, proudly linked to at the top of every page, contain nothing more than a phone number for the person responsible for that portfolio.
• Clicking on the “Pierrefonds/Roxboro” borough gets me a video greeting from the mayor of Lachine for no good reason, and it’s at the bottom of the page, forcing me to hunt for it to kill the audio.
• The “become a member” page still uses the old name for the party.
• Filling out the “become a member” page and submitting your information (unencrypted — fortunately they’re not asking for credit card numbers) results in a 404 error.
• In fact, everything in the “getting involved” section is just another form. The website doesn’t actually provide any information on how to get involved.
• Clicking on “Ahuntsic/Cartierville” gets you a video greeting from the right mayor, but only in French. Ther, mayor Marie-Andrée Beaudoin asks us if we knew that the borough’s northern border is on Rivière des Prairies. Really? Wow.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. This website is nothing to be proud of.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere: “Brand New” (The Other Bloke’s Blog)