Sorry if my criticism sounded harsh. I was not triggered by it, but simply going into depth why I do not think I should spend time making my site look like that.

My response was simply a reaction to the scope of criticism and the claim that this is the new best practices. Because the other site was held up as an example of what I should spend days emulating and making my site look like, the sheer time investment and “well, if you think it isn’t good, then you can’t be helped” made me believe that this is some canonical example of best practices and design. So I naturally critiqued it and said exactly why I thought the latest design standard was crap. That’s why it came out like that.

If I knew the author would be reading it, I would have been a lot more tactful in my criticism. But I do stand behind what I am saying. (For what it’s worth, the developer section of Qbix also needs a lot of work, but the OTHER sections + overall design of the site I think are good — but happy to take specific and constructive criticism in the same vein I gave it.)