Obese web sites - back in fashion?

Back in the (good old) day of the inflating web bubble, sites were springing up all over the place that tried to be all things to all men.  The bubble then burst, everyone learnt their lesson, and things progressed.

Ah, no.

Lately, I've spotted a worryingly increasing tendency for site requirements lists to span more and more pages.  And that's not because of the precise detail; it's because of the new worry that's hit project managers and webmasters across the country - what's the next big technology?  Which channels can I deliver to?  How many standards can I meet? How can I keep people on my site? How can I make money?  How can I beat the competition?

The answer to many of these questions is - don't try to answer all of these questions.

I've witnessed a number of project outlines, that on face value, look to be relatively simple and good ideas.  However, you then read the requirements, and you realise that they don't just want to do this one thing well, they also NEED single sign on, web service integration, discussion boards, online games, chat rooms, streaming media, digital certificate integration, WAP output, integration with umpteen HTML authoring packages and a personalisation engine.  And that's just for a site that tells you the time.

So take some advice - put your sites on a diet.  They don't have to be scrawny and thin, but have a balanced diet of what you need and what you want.

Check out the Guardian story link for how this kind of thing is becoming more common in the Public Sector.