"Concept Demo" Awards Program

Criteria

The disqualifications and criteria are each broken into two parts, with an important difference between the two parts. The first part has rules about content, design, and the like that are important, but they're things you probably expect if you have read the criteria for several of the top Award Sites! programs. If you know your website meets all of those requirements, you can safely skip to the program specific criteria. If you don't know what I'm referring through, I ask you to read through all the criteria. If you pass the disqualifications, you will be scored from 0-100 points as listed below.

These criteria are quite concise. In a full-fledged, functioning award program, the criteria would be much more extensive, and the difference in applicant frustration due to reading the same thing over again would be significant.

Common Criteria (50 points)

The HTML should be hand-coded and should validate. Any JavaScript should be free of errors (5 points).

There should be a balance between text/images and whitespace (5 points).

There should be no music unless I specifically request it (5 points).

Your content should be at least 90% original, with explicit attribution of non-original content (5 points).

No disabled right click, including photography and fine arts pages, no full screen mode, and no unethical use of JavaScript to keep me on your site (5 points).

You have a separate awards page, even if it is empty at the moment (5 points).

You have no blinking text and no more than 2 animated GIFs per page. (Both of these can cause problems for viewers with epilepsy.) (5 points)

I will visit your site at or above 800x600 navigation. If I see a horizontal scrollbar, or I have to click down more than 7 times, you will lose points. Long pages (or, if you prefer, all pages) should have a "Top" link at the bottom (5 points).

Correct grammar, spelling, and nO teXt liKE ThIS or 133+ ("leet" speak). You may find ordering The Elements of Style to be well worth the price in knowing how exactly to do this (10 points).

Program-Specific Criteria (50 points)

Usability Criteria

Your site should have an intuitive overall information architecture (5 points).

Remark: This is a fundamental issue in making a website that people will use and come back to. If you're not sure how to do this, you might order Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

We should be able to easily navigate each page without stopping to search for navigation elements, without guessing, and without using the browser back button (5 points).

Remark: If we have trouble navigating your site, the average user may have trouble as well.

Not only should the text contrast with the background (2 points), it is preferable to have dark text on a light background (3 points).

Reason: As the eye ages, seniors lose photoreceptors and everything seems to darken. This means that light text on a dark background is much harder for an older adult to read than it is for someone younger.

Does your web design draw attention to itself, or does it smoothly draw our attention to focus on the content? Do we leave your site thinking about web design or thinking about what you said?

Content Criteria

The secret phrase, which will be requested on the application, is "I respect your time."

Some of these appear subjective, in that they're hard to quantify. I believe they're important enough to include even if you can't measure them with a ruler.

Your website is about at least one major subject. (5 points).

Your website shows deep thought about that subject(s) and tells me something I didn't know (5 points).

You communicate difficult concepts in an understandable way (5 points).

Your content is a joy to read (5 points).

At my option, I may award up to 5 extra points for something special when a website goes above and beyond the call of duty in a way that my criteria do not anticipate.