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1. Excellent Web Site Award:

   1. The web site must be considered as a true knowledge source and a reference in its field, preferably dedicated to one single theme, its content being, original, informational, educational, scientific, presenting (or not) an entertainment component.

   2. The web site must have at least twenty (20) web pages, not including any existent "awards page", guest books, forums etc., Excellent design, clever original graphics and artwork, Presented well and easy to access and navigate.

   3. We welcome websites with informational, educational, scientific and or cultural content of great quality, presented in an original way, asking for the visitors' participation and providing these visitors access to an extensive and resourceful virtual library.

   4. To be considered for Excellent web site award, you must be a winner of AboutD Gold web site Award and the AboutD Gold web site award must be visible on your home page duly linked to AboutD.com.

   5. The Excellent web site award is awarded to only one web site in a month and this award must be visible at home page of the web site.

   6. Excellent web site Award winner must receive a review score of at least 90 points on the 100-point Rating System.

2. Gold web site Award:

   1. This web site award will be given to web site that presents an excellent overall balance of design, layout, well-optimized graphics, download time, friendly and functional navigation and overall professional appearance, originality and maintenance;

   2. The site must have at least Five (5) web pages.

   3. The site must be considered an example of good and innovative web design.

   4. Gold web site award must be visible at home page of the web site or at the Award Page where all awards are present, duly linked to AboutD.com. The award must be linked from the Home page of the web site and easily visible.

   5. Gold Award winners must also receive a review score of at least 60 points on the 100-point Rating System.

The Applying web site must be in English. The number of languages accepted may increase in the future. For now, any site in any other language, but having a full translation English languages, will be considered eligible. It will not be considered as a "bilingual site" if  one is having simple links to any on-line translation service, like the one provided by Altavista, for instance.

Scoring Scales and Limits or  100-point Rating System Procedures and the 100-point Rating System

When a web site award application is received, it is forwarded to a preliminary reviewer who verifies that the web site meets all basic criteria requirements.  It is then forwarded to a Review Team  and give it a score on a 100-point rating system, which breaks down broadly as follows with Tools of evaluation.

Technical component Design component Content component Aesthetic component Overall Impression

: : : : :

20 points 20 points 30 points 10 points 20 points

Tools used for evaluation

The tools used for several of our assessments include (but are not limited to):

• Browsers: Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla Firefox 1.0 all running in Windows XP

• HTML validation: W3C HTML validator and/or WDG validator

• CSS validation: W3C CSS validator;

• Accessibility Tests: WebXact and/or Cynthia Says and or Bobby Online;

• Link Checking: Web Link Validator;

• Structure, Deprecated HTML, Metadata Information as well as Styles, Images and Scripts on/off: NILS Accessibility Toolbar for Internet Explorer and the Web Developer Toolbar for Mozilla, by Chris Pederick;

• Text-mode browsing: Lynx Viewer.

Pre-Qualifiers

Before being considered for an Aboutd Web site Award, all applicants should satisfy the following pre-qualifiers:

• Because of COPPA regulations (visit COPPA), we ask that all applicants be at least 13 years of age in order to be considered for an award.

• You should also be the owner or designer of the website you are submitting.  Sorry, no anonymous submissions will be considered.

Disqualifies

Listed below are items which will disqualify your web site from being reviewed for the web site award.  To avoid the disappointment of being disqualified, you are advised to read this section carefully.

• Web Site that encourage hate, racism or condone discrimination toward any minority group or religion will not be reviewed.

• Web Site that promote or give instruction on illegal activities (such as terrorism, larceny, etc.) will not be reviewed.

• Web Site that link to any of the aforementioned web site will also not be reviewed, so please check all of your external links.

• Involuntary popup windows are not only annoying, but ineffective as tools for advertising.  Please make sure your site is free of all such popups.

• Flash intros should always have a skip option to allow visitors to proceed to the main page of your website if they wish.

• If you use music or prominent sound effects on your website, be sure to provide a means to turn them off.  Also, make sure your visitors don't have to turn off music or sound effects on every page of your site that they visit, as this can become wearisome.

• Be sure your web site doesn't force downloads on your visitors.  If your web site requires a program or applet which may need to be downloaded, please inform your visitors of this and provide a link.  Try not to rely upon popup window notifications for downloads, as many people simply close popup windows without even reading them.

• Disabled browser and mouse buttons take away the control of your web site visitor, which can be very disconcerting for inexperienced surfers.  Included under this item are websites that maximize browser windows automatically.  Try to avoid these.

• Your website should have at least 5 pages of content.  Surely if you even have a website at all, you have more than just a few pages of content to share, right?

• If your web site contains sections or pages that are still under construction, please do not apply for an award.  First finish construction on your website, and then apply.  After all, would you consider submitting a movie to the Academy Awards before it was really finished?

• Double-check your web site for broken internal links and images.  Always try to be on top of your website!

• And finally, make sure your web site has a page to display your awards.  Website award programs spend a lot of time and energy reviewing websites for awards.  Show them you are serious about your website by providing a place to display the awards you win.

Negatives

Although the following items won't disqualify your web site from review, your web site will certainly favor much better if you avoid them:

• Watch out for web page script errors, particularly in reference to JavaScript.  Always double check your code.

• Check all of your external links and images to be sure none are broken.

• Avoid horizontal scroll bars at anything 800 x 600 resolution or higher.  Be particularly careful when using frames, as sometimes a horizontal scroll bar will appear unexpectedly.

• Proofread and then re-proofread all of your text in order to eliminate spelling and grammatical errors.

• Avoid inconsistent navigation such as multiple menus in multiple locations.   Instead, create one menu and place it in the same place on all pages.

• Watch out for jaggies and fuzzies, which are images that have rough edges (jaggies) and images that are blurry (fuzzies).

• Don't overuse animations.  This invariably makes a website look haphazard and disorderly.

• Try not to use distracting background images or patterns, but instead let subtlety be your guide.

Positive

Now here are some suggestions which will not only better your website, but also increase your chances of receiving an Aboutd Web site Award:

• Design your web site with a good color scheme.  Try to avoid clashing colors, and instead pick colors that blend well together.  Also avoid using too many colors, as oftentimes two colors is enough.

• Make sure your text is easy to read, with enough contrast between the text color and the background, and a text size that is not too small nor too big.

• Be consistent in your format (over all) design.  Try to avoid web pages that look completely different from one another.

• Use one menu which is the same on all web pages.  This makes navigating your site so much easier and intuitive for your visitors.

• Use consistent justification of your text and graphics.  For example, don't place your pictures on the left side of the page, and then post all your text in the center of the page.  Instead, make everything left justified, or everything center justified.

• Not everyone who visits your website will be seeing it the same way you do.   Therefore, it's always best to make sure your site looks good at any screen resolution.

• The very best websites on the World Wide Web have uplifting original content.  Make your site uplifting and unique!

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