Website Awards - Adding Your Award: Criteria for Listing

The Awards Worksheet lists over 400 Award Sites!
If you have an Award Site and would like to be listed in the Awards Worksheet,
please read the criteria and submit the Application Form!

Richard Berends, Webmaster, Website Awards

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With hundreds of Award Sites, the Website Awards Worksheet is one of the largest lists of awards on the Web today. The goal is to provide award seekers with a comprehensive list of quality awards and to help them apply for awards. Since hundreds of Award Sites, with well over 1,000 awards, is comprehensive by almost anyone's definition, part of the goal has been achieved. Future efforts will be focused on improving the quality of the awards that are listed in the Worksheet.

Criteria for Listing | Benefits of Listing | Application Form

To ensure quality, Award Sites must meet the following criteria to be listed in the Worksheet. Please read the criteria before you submit your award program. Our Review Team will evaluate all submissions and your program must be approved by the Review Team before it will be listed in the Website Awards Worksheet.

1.	You should have a direct link from your homepage to your award program if the program is only a part of your website. If your site has a splash page or Flash intro, the link must be on the first page that has links. (Edited 20 June 2004.)

2.	You must have a clearly defined purpose for your award and clearly defined criteria for the selection of winning sites. Just saying "I must like it" (or similar) is not sufficient.

3.	You must list the winners of your award in your website, and the winning sites must represent a good standard of Web design and development. Added incentive or encouragement awards are exempt, however there must be other awards offered with a winners' list to be considered for inclusion. (Edited 14 December 2004.)

4.	Winners' list must show the dates awards are granted. Annual updates are acceptable only for annual awards. All other winners' lists must be updated regularly on a daily, weekly, monthly and/or quarterly basis. (Edited 7 November 2004.)

5.	If your criteria or any part thereof is copied from another website, you must have obtained permission from and give credit to the original author.

6.	Your award graphic must be displayed in your website. It may include the word "sample" (or equivalent) to prevent unauthorized use.

7.	If your site, award graphic or any part thereof is not original, excluding images purchased from art suppliers, you must have obtained permission from and give credit to the original artist.

8.	If your award graphic is greater than 15Kb (optimized) or 200 pixels in height or width, you must provide a graphic that does not exceed these sizes as an alternative.

9.	Award programs with a "worst of" award (or similar) and programs that ridicule or demean applicants or their websites in any way will not be listed in the Worksheet.

10.	Award programs and owners that ridicule or demean other sites, award programs or listing services in any way will not be listed in the Worksheet.

11.	Applicants must not be obligated to sign your Guestbook as one of the prerequisites for winning your award.

12.	Applicants must not be required to register or use a password to access your award program (including application form, criteria and/or any other required reading, legal policies, and winners' list), and they must not be required to become a member to submit or nominate a site for your award. (Edited 21 June 2005.)

13.	Your award must be available to the majority of websites. See the section below on Specific Awards for details of and exceptions to this requirement.

14.	If your website can only be viewed properly in Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator, you must state this condition in your homepage and main awards page.

15.	Your award program, award graphic and overall website must represent a good standard of Web design and development.

16.	If your award program is rated by Award Sites!, it must have a rating of 3.0 or higher. Award programs do not have to be rated to be listed in the Worksheet.

17.	The overall website must meet or exceed the award program's published criteria at the level required of applicants to earn awards. (Rule added 5 June 2005.)

Some of the Award Sites presently listed in the Worksheet do not meet this criteria. They were listed before the criteria and Review Team were implemented. Eventually, Award Sites that do not meet the above criteria will be removed from the Worksheet.

Specific Awards

To limit the size of the Worksheet, which must be loaded and displayed on the Internet, we will only list awards that are available to the majority of websites. Awards related to specific topics or types of sites will not be listed. However, the following awards are exceptions to this rule, and they will be listed in the Worksheet if they meet the above criteria and the approval of the Review Team:

	awards that are only for personal, not for profit or commercial websites, provided they do not relate to specific topics

	awards that are only for websites related to education, literary or visual arts

	awards that are only for sites related to website design, development or promotion

	awards that are only for sites located in a particular country or written in a particular major language, provided they do not relate to specific topics

My apologies to the owners of Award Sites that do not meet this criteria. Please check out our Best Award Indexes for other possible locations to list your awards. This criteria results from the very practical need to limit the size of the Worksheet. It is not intended to discriminate against any specific awards.

Foreign Awards

Award Sites do not have to be written in English to be listed in the Worksheet. Many of the Award Sites already listed are written in foreign languages, and I encourage award seekers to apply for awards in other countries. Applications for listing in the Worksheet are welcome, and encouraged, from quality Award Sites around the world.

Award Graphics

Your award graphic is the prize you offer to websites that win your award. A graphic with strong visual appeal can make your award more desirable to award seekers, but you must be practical. Don't ask websites to load fast as one of the prerequisites for your award, then give the winners a 20-30Kb graphic. Award graphics do not have to be large to have strong visual appeal!

Optimize your award graphic to reduce the loading time. The file size of most graphics can be reduced by 30% to 50% or more by using optimization tools that are readily available on the Web. Try the tools at Image Crunchers or HVS GIFCruncher. If you often work with graphics, purchase a good program, which will optimize graphics in almost any file format.

Applications

To apply for a listing in the Website Awards Worksheet, use the Application Form or submit the following information by email. You must submit all the information that is requested. Incomplete applications will not be considered for listing in the Worksheet. All applicants must be 13 years of age or older. As a matter of policy, we will not list an Award Site if we know the owner is under 13 years of age.

To apply, please use		your name
the Application Form		your email address
or send the information		title of your website
by email to...		URL of your homepage ⁽¹⁾
webmaster@website-awards.net		number of awards you offer
		age of your award program
Please take the time to		your rating by Award Sites!, if applicable
read our Privacy Policy.		name of your award ⁽²⁾
		URL of your award page
		your age group: (a) under 13 years, (b) 13 years or older
		any other details that will help us review your application

⁽¹⁾ The name of your award will be linked to the URL of your homepage. This forces award seekers to look around your site before applying and makes it easier for me to keep all the links up to date.

⁽²⁾ If approved, your Award Site will be listed as one entry. If you have more than one award, you must submit one name for all the awards. You may want to use the title of your site for this purpose.

Please include any additional information that will help us review your application. If your award is unique in any respect, or if you have any special criteria for your award, you may want to include a brief description to make sure the Review Team have all these details when they visit your Award Site.

Due to time constraints, I will reply only to successful applicants!

I reserve the right, in consultation with the Review Team, to decide which Award Sites will be listed in the Awards Worksheet.

Retirements & Removals

1.	If you plan to temporarily close for less than three (3) months or plan to retire your Award program, please contact the Webmaster to maintain your good standing with Website Awards.

	Award programs that plan to reopen after a temporary closure of less than three (3) months will maintain a listing on the Awards Worksheet, but a note will be added stating the program is not accepting applicatons.

	Award programs that retire or close for more than three (3) months while in good standing with this program will be removed from the Awards Worksheet, but may be replaced after the Award program has reopened by completing the application form.

2.	Award programs that fail to notify the Webmaster and that are inactive for a period of three (3) months, in the opinion of the Review Team, will be removed from the list of Awards Worksheet. Awards that are issued annually or biannually will be considered to be inactive if they are not issued at the regular time in any calendar year.

	Award programs that have been removed from the Awards Worksheet due to inactivity will be considered for reinstatement if they become active again. A removed program must be active again for a minimum period of three (3) months, in the opinion of the Review Team, before it will be considered for reinstatement.

3.	Sites that contain sexual, racial, sexist, violent, abusive, or illegal content will not be listed. Sites that promote, encourage or send spam will not be listed. Please don't waste your time, or ours, if your Award Site has this kind of content or activity.

4.	Criteria for listing is subject to change. Listed sites will have three (3) months to update their site and program after a change has been made to the criteria, or their site will be removed from the Awards Worksheet. Listed sites that do not remain compliant with current and any future criteria will be removed from the Awards Worksheet.

5.	Award programs that violate or cease to meet the above criteria in any way and Awards that are deemed to have engaged in illegal or unethical activities, including copyright infringement or bandwidth stealing, will be removed from the Awards Worksheet.

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