Now I will show you the 10 rules that will halp you to decide if a site is worthy of the Great Site Award. Don't be scared to submit a bad site to us: it's not fair that people looses its time to visit some very bad sites. If you left your time, please, help other people, so the won't!
The site must be quick to open: I know that some free space servers aren't so quick, and that in some periods of the day some servers can't be open quickly. Don't worry: the site will be controled considering these problems. If a site is slow, it will be slow in any hour of the day and on any server! We know how to decide if it's a server fault or not
The HTML code of the site MUST be without faults: an HTML full of faults made the page difficult to navigate and slow! (and I'm NOT speacking about grammar, or type faults)
The background of the page MUST be edited in a way to make the text simple to read: if the background is edited in a bad way (or if it's not edited in any way) there's the bad thing that we have to select the text with the mouse to read it! Then the background must be quick to load, so it MUST be smaller than 10 KB
There mustn't be dead links! If the webmaster hadn't made a page, why he linked it? It's really boring to see the 404 not found error! He can make a "coming soon" page!
It's not good to speack about a serie, if you don't know anything about it. Why you have to copy thingk you read on another site? You think that the visitors will apreciate to find everywhere the same infos? Or you think that you can bridle everyone inserting in your site some incorrect infos? A thing that is really forbidden id TO STEAL OTHER PEOPLE WORK CUTTING BY THEIR SITES AND PASTING IT! That's a really horrible thing, how you think the person that wrote these things will feel if he will have a look in your site? And you haven't to think that you won't ever discovered! You have to insert on your site YOUR opinions, and YOUR feelings about a serie, only in this way you will make people come back to your site, and you will make them send their feedbacks to you.
Pictures MUST be originals, and if there's some pictures downloaded by another site, there MUST be the credit to the site, or under the picture, or in a dedicated page. But the most important thing is that IT'S FORBIDDEN TO LINK THE PICS TO SOMEONE'S ELSE SITE! If you will do that, you will slow the site where you inserted the link, and you will make a very bad service to the webmaster. Infact you will make him in the condition to be taxed by the provider. Infact some providers, setted a maximum of traffic of the site. If the site will exceed it, the webmaster will be taxed (for exemple on Simplenet the webmaster is taxed of 400$!!!!) I understand that it's a way to have more space in your free account, but why you have to damage the others?
If the site has a picture gallery, there MUST be REAL thubnails. That is: it's not enough that you constrain the proportion of the large pics to maximun 100x100 pixels. This make the page more ordered, but this won't make the page faster to download! You have to make with a graphic program like Paint Shop Pro some preview pictures very small (100x100 pixel maximum), and you have to link them to the big pic. So people will be able to have a look to every picture before download it. If you haven't any graphic program (but paint Shop Pro you can even download free!) you can make a text thubnail, with the description of the picture! Your picture gallery will surelly be improved by that. Another important think for picture, is to insert EVER the tags width, height and alt. The first two are important because in this way the browser will download the text before the pics, and the page will open faster. The third is important because in this way the programs made for peopel with some handicap will read to them even that in this position there's a picture, and what picture is.
Dont' use useless java applets! Why have I to watch on your site a java that says to me what time is it in my town, if I have Windows clock? Why I have to tell to java my name, to watch a personised hello? These java (and lots of others) are useless, and they are useful only to make the site incompatible with some browsers (normally an applet java that works with netscape won't work with Internet Explorer and viceversa), and they will crash the browser, making your visitors loose a lot of time, and a lot of useful infos and liks! Sure, there's some useful applets, but you havn't to exagerate, with anything. Javascript, instead, are very useful, but you haven't to exagerate even for them, and you have every time to insert even the tag "noscript", so people that can't view the script, can view the page.
The site must be openable in the same way at any resolution, and with any browser. You haven't to discriminate people that surf on internet with the screen resolution of 640x480! You haven't to think that they aren't many: they are more than you can imagine. Then, if you created a frame version, you HAVE to create even a no frame version: infact frames make the programs made for Disabled persons stall!
A page that is really wonderful is a page that will always change. So a good page will always be under construction. Please, for this reason, please remove the "Under Construction" pics. They will make the page slower, and they are useless!