I've seen similar websites done for my former high school and former employee. I think in both cases it was webmasters showing off and justifying their existenc

I've seen similar websites done for my former high school and former employee. I think in both cases it was webmasters showing off and justifying their existence combined with website owners being impressed by their 1337-skillz and maybe having some complexes that they aren't modern enough. It also didn't help that owners weren't actually users of the website and that the design was probably demoed to them on developer's machine over localhost where it may have performed reasonably fast.