■ CriteriaㆍGeneral Criteria

• All applications should be submitted by the site's webmaster or owner.
• Applicants must be more than 14 years old. [Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)]
• Applications are received only from the 1st to the 15th of the month.
• Sites must be family-friendly and child-safe.
• Our award program can evaluate sites written in English, Korean, Chinese, German, Dutch, French, Flemish and Russian.
• Your site should appear normal in MSIE 6.0+ and/or Netscape 6.0+.
• Please read our privacy statement before you apply. I will use your name, site title and site URL.
  If you are a winner, I will use a screenshot of your site.
• All applicants are required to read all of our criteria and all Rule (Criteria ~ Self-test) before they apply for an award. You will be permitted to see the application page after you have read all of the Criteria and all Rule.

■ DesignㆍGraphicsㆍLayout

• First page impression
  - The first page we visit should be interesting enough to make visitors want to look further into your site.
  - The first page should make clear what you have to offer and that your site is of interest to the general public.
  - Once we pass the entrance page, clear navigation to all other pages on your site must be present.

• Design and origin
  - Originality and creativity of design is a plus if the applicant is the designer.
  - The design should reflect part of what you and your site are all about. Let your graphics reflect the theme of your site.
  - If you use graphics or design templates from others, then you must give credit for the graphics and/or design.
  - Design should have consistency in background, graphics, menus, navigation symbols and layout.
  - It's okay for the design to be simple, as long as it is effective in the presentation.

• Load Time of Your Pages
  - The loading time of a site should be under one minute when using a 128k connection.
  - We prefer streaming to waiting.
  - Site should not be full of useless graphics that slow down the loading time. Make sure your graphics are necessary.

• Pop-Up Windows.
  - Pop-up or pop-under windows take the joy out of viewing your site.
  - We want to enjoy our visit, so do not have unnecessary pop-up or pop-under windows.

• Background Music Must Have a Turn-Off Option.
  - The ON-OFF button must be added when using background music.
  - It is preferable that the ON/OFF button be at the top of the page.

■ Content

• Original content.
  - Content must be well-organized. Your site must allow us to recognize the basic theme.
  - One of the most important things that makes a good home page is originality.
  - Your site must not consist mainly of other people's material or work.
  - We want to see something that we have not seen before.
  - We are looking for sites that have an original writing style and interesting subject matter.
  - Your writing style and subject matter should be worthy of a bookmark.

• Webmaster
  - Webmaster should show passion for a specific topic - graphics, art, cultural events, excellent photography, etc.
  - Let us see the webmaster behind the web site.

• Updates.
  - Site must show that updates have been and are done on a continuous basis.
  - Make your visitors want to come back by updating regularly and always adding fresh content.

• Reason To Return.
  - Make sure your visitors have something of interest so they will keep coming back to your site. Otherwise, visitors will skim through your site and not return.

• At Least Twenty Pages Of Quality Content.
  - The following is not considered content: guest books, awards-received pages, award program pages (unless site is a stand-alone award program), link pages, FAQs, web ring pages, chat rooms, message boards.

• Grammar and spelling.
  - More than 5 spelling or grammatical errors on a page will result in a deduction from your score.

• Excellent Addition To The Web.
  - Let your site be an excellent addition to the web by offering things to your visitors such as free graphics, images, web design tools, awards, tutorials, tips, etc.

• Animation
  - Avoid excessive use of animation! If you must use animation, limit it to no more than 5 per page.

■ Navigation

• Site Should Be Easy To Navigate.
  - If you use menus or icons that require downloading before viewing, you should offer a text option.
  - Your navigation icon/menu should work correctly.

• Ease Of Navigation.
  - We would like to see easy ways to get back and forth between your main content pages.

• Home Page link.
  - Every page of your site must have a link to the home page. Do not make your visitors have to use the BACK button.

• Don't Lose Us.
  - If you display links to external sites, then your links should open in a new window. We would like to be certain whether or not we are at your site.

• Contact
  - We like to see sites that have a way to contact the webmaster. Having an email link on each page is a great way to accomplish this.

■ HTML Coding

• TITLE and META Tags.
  - META tags and TITLE tags are very useful -- your site can easily be found with a search engine.
  - We will use key words that you supply in your META Tags to see how your site ranks in the search engines.
  - For visitors who cannot load your images, can they see what is written in the ALT tags (or remarks)?
  - The loading time of your site should be under one minute when using a 128k connection.

• Is HTML Coding Clear?
  - We use such tools as Doctor HTML and W3C HTML Validation Service.
  - Our evaluator inspects your HTML code in detail through the use of these tools.
  - Your HTML coding must be compatible with generally-used browsers.

• Frames Should Operate Without Errors
  - External links should not open in your frameset. We must be allowed to leave your frames.

• No Excessive Advertising Banners.

■ Disqualified

• DQ01 - Web sites containing racism, animal abuse, etc., or publishing ads for pornography, alcohol, drugs, or illegal products and Casino Site. (Link inclusion to these site.)
• DQ02 - If we cannot consider your site family-friendly and child-safe your site will be disqualified.
• DQ03 - Sites that do not have "COPYRIGHT" and "PRIVACY STATEMENT" pages. (Music, graphics and photographs must be credited to the author or creator).
• DQ04 - Sites that do not have an "AWARDS WON" page for the display of awards.
• DQ05 - Sites with more than 5 missing graphics or images on 2 pages.
• DQ06 - Sites with Java errors, JavaScript errors, 404 or DNS Codes, or frame errors.
• DQ07 - Sites without at least 20 pages of contents. This does not include guest books, awards-received pages, award program pages (unless the site is a stand-alone award program), link pages, FAQs, web ring pages, chat rooms and message boards.)
• DQ08 - Sites that disable use of the right mouse button.
• DQ09 - Sites that use Comet Cursor.
• DQ10 - Site with a horizontal scrollbar at 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 resolution.
• DQ11 - Sites with nothing but links to other sites, or sites that are only one page.
• DQ12 - Sites whose applicants are under 14 years old (COPPA).
• DQ13 - Sites with no "SKIP INTRO" button or non-Flash text option on pages that use Flash.
• DQ14 - Sites requiring a password to view pages.
• DQ15 - Sites that are difficult to read because of text/background color combinations.
• DQ16 - Sites that apply between the 16th and the last day of the month.
• DQ17 - Sites that re-apply before the 120-day waiting period has passed.
• DQ18 - Sites which are unfinished, under construction or coming soon messages.
• DQ19 - Those who are hosted with free sites, Geocities, Lycos, Angelfire, Tripod, etc.
  It Must be your own domain name, http://www.yourdomain.com
• DQ20 - Site that try to apply for the award through our "Guest Comment".