The White Swan Award Program will not be tolerant of anyone who does not take the time to read our criteria. If your site does not have the items on it, listed below, your site will be disqualified. It takes a long time to evaluate a site. We will not waste our time indulging those people too thoughtless to read the criteria and not prepare their sites to meet and/or exceed it before applying for our award. You will be notified and a link to this page will be given. You will not be able to reapply until the period of two ( 2 ) months has elapsed. If you want our award on your site you must earn it!

Applications will be accepted from the 1st. of each month through the 15th. Any applications dated after the 15th. of the month will be disqualified. You will not be able to reapply until the time period of two ( 2 ) months has elapsed. You will be notified and a link to this page will be given. In order to comply with C.O.P.P.A. you must be at least 13 years old to apply for our award with the permission of a parent or guardian if younger than 18. You must be the webmaster/mistress of the site you are applying for. We evaluate commercial, personal and stand alone award program sites. We do not evaluate forum/chat/blog, link, gaming and/or group sites.

We do not evaluate any site that has their own award program which excludes stand alone award programs from being evaluated for their award.

Sites must be in English and contain at least 5 pages of original content. Note: We do not count link pages, awards won pages, and forums as original content. In order for our evaluators to properly evaluate your site it must be in the English language or have an English translation on each page.

All sites must reside on a personal domain. Note: We will not evaluate sites on free servers.

If of any interest to children and USA based, there must be a C.O.P.P.A. statement and link on your site.

Any site which gathers information from visitors must display a Privacy Statement. Note: If you have a forum, contact page or any other area that asks any personal information you must have a Privacy Statement on your site.

All sites applying must have a separate area, clearly shown and linked, where awards they received are displayed. Note: The awards must be displayed at their original sizes. ( No resized awards. )

Copyright statement pertaining to all work and graphics done by you. If they are not your own creations then credit must be given to the creator of them. Note: If not your own creations and you have no idea who made them do not use them on your site! This program will not accept copyright permission statements such as, found on a free graphic site, taken from the web nor any other statement of this type as being valid copyright information or permission.

All sites must be viewer rated for all ages and display a rating badge. ( Examples ) ICRA, Trust Worthy and/or SafeSurf.

Sites that post via words, graphic or badge that the site and/or page validate or meet any requirements to display said words, graphic or badge must do so or be disqualified!

All applications must include the password "swan".

Long pages must have an "Up To The Top" link. ( Examples )  Text Form:  Up To Top   Graphically:

Internal links must open into the same window and external links must open into a new window. Note: Sites coded in HTML and XHTML "Strict" will be excluded from this requirement. Example of an external link: ( target="_blank" ) <a href="http://whiteswanaward.funtyme.net/" target="_blank"> Example of an internal link: ( target="_top" ) <a href="http://whiteswanaward.funtyme.net/id10.htm" target="_top">

Alt tags must be on all images on your site and descriptive of the image it is used for. Note: Backgrounds and flash intros are not included in this requirement. Example of an Alt Tag: alt="Photo of Aunt Millie.  width: 150 height: 98" Tell us what the image is. If it is a photo of Aunt Millie then the alt tag should state that it is indeed a photo of sweet Aunt Millie. Having an alt tag saying thumbnail or screen shot without describing what the image is will not do it!

No "Under Construction or Coming Soon" pages. Note:  When you apply for awards your site should look as complete as possible.

No floaters, we do not want to be followed around on a page!

There must be a way to turn off the music on any page it is used.

Animations should be used sparingly. Please, no more than three on any page.

Causes the evaluator's computer to crash.

Notice   A password was added because of the people, applying for awards, that do not fully read what we are looking for in a site and what is stated in our posted criteria. The White Swan Award Program uses the following areas when judging your website during our evaluation. Design - Content - Graphics - Navigation

The White Swan Award Criteria Continued