Awards
won by
Sariel's Guide to Pern

Most websites seem to abound with awards won, and a whole lot seem to offer their own personal award.  In this sea of awards, it's very hard to find meaningful ones, offered by sites with truly high standards.  I only applied for awards that I would be proud to display, awards given to sites with thoughtful design and real content instead of a lot of fluff graphics or glitzy java scripts and flash--sites that look good but have no content.

Neilsen Web Sites & Business Graphics is a professional web design company that offers three tiers of awards: gold, silver, and bronze.  Although I only managed to secure a bronze this year, I am very proud of it because of their particularly high standards.  I am only an amateur webmaster, and my web design skills are entirely self-taught.  To be recognized at all by a professional design house means that I must be doing something right!

The Dragon Weyr Award, offered by the website of the same name, is the first one I received.  Although I don't actually like the design of their own website (its organization makes the content hard to find and the background makes it hard to read), the description of the standards by which they judge other sites convinced me that their award would be an honor to receive, so I applied and won on January 22, 1999.  At the moment, the description of their standards is not posted, because the award program has been  discontinued.

The Site Wars sponsors friendly competition between websites in order to promote them and increase site traffic.  Sarina discovered my site on her own (i.e. I did not apply for this), presented me with this award, and invited me to join in the competition.  I don't really have time to commit to joining the Site Wars, but I gladly accepted the award.