Sandye

Purpose

1. Is to give recognition to the outstanding sites that show real web design talent.

The Rules In order to comply with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act of April 21, 2000 (COPPA) please do not apply, if you are age 13 or under.

1. No pornography, racism, sexism or links to such sites.
2. Due to time involvement, you will not receive a reply if you did not win the award. If you won you will hear within a week from the time you applied, unless we get terribly swamped with applicants. In that case we will review your site as soon as possible.
3. Please read the criteria before applying for the award.
4. Sites will be judged by a panel of three web designers and all decisions are final.
5. If you receive the award, it must be displayed and linked back to this site.
   Sites that do not do this within a reasonable amount of time, will be removed from the recipients list.
6. Award graphic is copyright and must not be altered in any way.

Criteria for award

1. No broken links, construction signs, JavaScript errors etc.
2. If you have sound on your site, there needs to be some way to shut it off.
3. Easy navigation and eye appeal.
4. There should be no: pop-up windows, very little animation, etc.
5. Your site must be compatible with both IE and NN.
6. Submitted site must be in English or an English version available.
7. Please review the Recipients list, before applying.
8. Loading time will definitely be an important factor.

All judges for the Midnight Surf Award Program agree to completely review all sites submitted (with the exception of any sites that contain illegal content, pornographic, racist, hate material or any kind of exploitation and there should be no links to these type of sites). Judges will go by all posted criteria for the Midnight Surf Award.

Midnight Surf judges will not discriminate on grounds of race, gender, nation of origin, religion etc.

Also In order to comply with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act of April 21, 2000 we will not accept applications from anyone below 14 years of age.

If your site should change at anytime to where we feel it is unethical, we reserve the right to remove your membership from the award recipients list.

We at Midnight Surf would like to increase the value of the Internet by encouraging excellence in web design. It is for this reason we have decided to give out our Awards, honoring what we feel are some of the best sites on the net. Below you will see some of the things we hope to achieve:

• Reward those that work hard to achieve excellence in web design.

• Encourage people to have sites that contain useful content as well as nice design.

• Last but not least, to encourage designers never to give up on striving to be the best.

On behalf of all of the people involved in Midnight Surf, we would like to thank you for your participation in our Award Program.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Both personal and commercial sites are welcome to apply. Sites are judged mainly on content, design, graphics and navigation , as well as functionality. Below is a list of things our judges will be looking for.

Our Judges put in alot of time and effort to review any applications, therefore Midnight Surf requires that all recipients display the Award and link it back to http://sandye.net/surf/ in order to be on our winners list.

Judges Descretion:

The Courage Certificate goes out to those who have shown outstanding courage while fighting some of the battles that life brings.

This cannot be applied for, it is given by our Judges descretion.

Judges Descretion:

This Certificate is given to sites by our Judges descretion.

Sites they consider “Super Outstanding” that shines above the rest, with nice design but most important “The Content”.

If you think that is your site, then by all means be sure and apply for the “Certificate”.

Our Judges put in alot of time and effort to review any applications, therefore Midnight Surf requires that all recipients display the Award and link it back to http://sandye.net/surf/ in order to be on our winners list.

ALL SITES MUST BE IN ENGLISH OR HAVE AN ENGLISH VERSION!

Content

• Does your site offer a possitive contribution to the Internet Community?

Design

• Is your site pleasing to the eye and does it have a professional appearance

• Do you offer an on/off option for background music (better to avoid the use of music)

• Have you used the same font size throughout your site (is it large enough to be readable to all visitors)

• Have you avoided using busy backgrounds that make it hard to read the text

• Have you avoided the overuse of animation, applets, banners etc.

Graphics

• Have you kept loading time in mind with your graphics

• Are your graphics original

• Are your graphics of top quality

• Do your graphics serve a purpose

• Did you avoid the use of to many graphics

Navigation

• Have you avoided the use of the browsers back button

• Can the visitor get to any part of your site, with a minimal amount of clicks

• Did you keep your page lengths short enough so there is not to much up and down scrolling required

• Does your site avoid causing the vistor to scroll from side to side

• Did you put a back to top button on pages that may require it

Functionality

• Does your site have a reasonable load time

• Did you avoid visitors having to download plug-ins

• Do you have an English version to your site

• Does your site work in both Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers

• Are all your links, applets, scripts etc. in working order

One of the most important things is your content, it should offer a possitive contribution to the Internet Community.

First impressions are also very important, so make sure your pages are pleasing to the eye and offer your visitors something nice to look at. It is more likely that your visitors will stay and look around. Don’t have wild backgrounds that make it hard for people to read your text. Don’t have alot of junk on your pages such as banner ads etc.

If your pages take to long to load you have lost alot of visitors. Try to minimize your graphics and have few animations etc.

If you want music on your site, be sure there is a way for the visitor to turn it off. Our Judges prefer no music, as not everyone has the same taste and it just takes longer to load. They find it really annoying when they are reviewing sites.

Visitors should be able to go to any part of your site from whatever page they are on. Navigation is a very important part of a website..

A good site is always being worked on, but don’t draw attention to it with under constructions signs etc. Make your site have a finished feel to it.

Check navigation bar to the left for detailed Criteria, Scoring etc.