Award Sites 2.5 Fromper Sites

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Frompers are tiny invisible beings who are simply marvelous to have around because they will accept the blame, or the credit, for anything  without a murmur. But the Fromper lifecycle is wholly dependent on the amount of human imagination in the vicinity -- no imagination, no Frompers. To encourage the amount of imagination on the Internet, therefore, I have created this Award, because if a small invisible being were to vanish I believe it would give me eyestrain, and perhaps a headache.

This site encourages creativity

To qualify for this award, enter the following in my guestbook or email it to me. (Signing the guestbook is not mandatory.)

I will be influenced if people linked from your site refer to you as inspirational or if other people who see your name in my guestbook testify that yours is a wonder-full site. Having your friends sign the guestbook is not mandatory. Having links on your site, however, is part of celebrating other people's creativity as well as your own.

I also strongly recommend you read Thalia's Tips for Accessible Web Pages, because if your pages take too long to load or are not readable by my friends with older browsers, you probably won't qualify.

The award is open to all sites -- personal, nonprofit, educational or commercial -- as long as there is content on your site that celebrates others besides yourself, and inspiration that others can get without paying for it.

No site that encourages hatred, abuse, or humiliation of any individual or group will qualify. With some exceptions, notably, lawyer jokes and anything poking fun at Mephistopheles, who gets entirely too big for his hatbrim on a regular basis.

I will let you know within 4 weeks if you have won the Fromper Award. However, I've got a lot of other mail to answer, too, so I don't send out notices if you didn't win. If you don't hear from me within a month, check over the criteria again. The two most frequent reasons I haven't given the award have been: 1) the site is about you and your interests, but does not celebrate others or contribute to their growth; 2) the site does not pass Bobby's accessibility criteria. If your site changes in the future (and changing either of those two characteristics can only bring you more traffic!) then you are welcome to re-apply.

If the Frompers agree that they like to dance on your pages, I will ask you to download  the award graphic and post it in a suitable position of honor on your page, with a link back to my site -- and to give me a graphic to post on my award page and link back to you. If you do not have a graphic logo or button, I will be happy to help you create one.

If I find your site inspirational, I may even write something about you myself.

Write On!

 


About Awards

Awards have several values:
  1. They help promote your page, *if* you get an award from a well-visited site that posts a link to each site it gives an award to.
  2. They give your page credibility, *if* visitors notice the awards page and believe that in the authenticity of the awards and the value judgement of the site(s) that gave you the awards.
  3. They boost your self-esteem, *if* you believe in the value-judgement of the people who gave you the award.
  4. They give you some nice content, *if* the award is well-designed and the site it is linked to consists of more than a few vanity-pages and "I'll give you an AWARD if you link to me!"

An award won't do much for you if you don't believe in yourself already, if you haven't worked on your page so that it catches attention *without* awards, if you don't admire the quality of the site that gives you the award, and if the sites that give you awards don't post links to you.

If you want to go for an award on those criteria, these are some other good places (besides mine) to look for them:

Focus Award Sites (rated awards)
Website Awards Worksheet
Award-It
SelfPromotion.com
is a great place to go to learn to fine-tune your site, get listed in search engines, and apply for awards.

I also think it would be fun to link sites together that not only celebrate creativity, but celebrate it in other people. Moondance, for instance, was begun to celebrate the creativity of women, and from month to month inspires both men and women to do even more in both writing and art. Rosewood originally grew out of a chat group, but its celebration of imagination attracted and inspired a growing circle, re-awakening Muses and birthing new ones.

Have you been told that your site inpired someone to create something new? Let's link up and inspire even more!

The problem with most link pages is that the Information Highway is constantly under construction. StreetWrites has moved three times since Thalia moved to Tripod; Anitra now has two home sites (one for activist work, one for personal and literary topics) and is building a domain. Just maintaining links is a full-time job.

But there are services that can take over the link-tracking for you. One of them is Webring.Org. Once you put a set of standard code on your page, pointing to the "next", "previous", etc. sites in your ring, you never have to change anything about them. Webring takes over keeping track of who is next, previous, etc.

This is a proposal for a Frompers Web, a webring to link sites that encourage and develop imagination, creativity and the sense of wonder. These are the criteria:

If you feel comfortable with those criteria, enter your site information here. A set of HTML code will be sent to you, tailored to your own site. You can also copy the standard code and modify it.

Save the Vanishing Fromper!

This Frompers Web site is owned by Thalia.
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Do you want to help Save the Vanishing Frompers?

Now that Yahoo! has taken over Webring, they have also created a standardized webring navigation bar. Once you insert a small Javascript snippet in pur page, any webring you join is automatically added to your display. This is nice and handy, but not all webring visitors can use the Javascript navigation bar. Because accessibility is a major issue for me, I ask that you display the HTML links in addition to, or in place of, the Javascript bar. Thanks. :)

Once your page is posted with webring navigation code, email Thalia. As long as your site fits the criteria, that's it -- we add you to the Ring. If we have any concerns, we'll email you and see what we can work out.

I expect to enjoy rubbing shoulders with more warm creatively giving people like the ones I like to give the Fromper Award. And with all of us linking pages of creative support and encouragement, there could be a population explosion of Frompers on the Web!


Visit Webring.Org to find out more about webrings
Learn more about frompers
Apply to join the Fromper Web
View the list of Frompers Web sites
Edit your site information
See the standard ring code
Email Thalia

 

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Thursday, 17-Jan-2002 07:41:30 EST