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I feel like that article misses the biggest differentiator. "Be early enough that this looked reasonable at the time - win - rely on network effects to never need to upgrade your site."

I agree totally with the accessibility bit, but overall I think this article is based on a totally flawed premise. For starters most sites that gain traction look very good, and they are just citing the extremely small number of exceptions and acting like they represent some sort of trend. Second, almost all those sites gained traction in an era when their designs looked good or at least fine compared to their contemporaries and then lived off familiarity and network effects.

Thank you for posting this gem. I really enjoyed it.

For anyone wondering, there's a previous discussion on this article on HN[1]

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338459

I feel like Nilay Patel and the designers at The Verge take this article as their mantra...