Earlier this year, Jane and Lazy Bee Scripts ran a very successful Website Award program.

How about doing another one? <_<

I am thinking of a real time voting Poll on here??

Any Suggestions?

I'm looking for someone to set up and run a show-specific website for me. Any offers?

Jane - Does some onsite hosting?

Give me an idea of the sort of website you are after?

Are you after domain name and hosting as well etc?

Not after a domain name, just someone to set up a decent looking website for my next show, and add to/alter it regularly with photos of the rehearsals, etc.

Anne-Marie have a look at Freepages and then contact me jane@amdram.co.uk I'm sure we can help you.

Jane

Check out...

www.amadrama.co.uk

I do "one offs" for groups...

also...



George

returning to the topic yes, brilliant idea!

I'd be well up for that one.


Ged

Stuart from Lazy Bee did an awful lot of work on this one - thanks Stuart - and even managed to get some vouchers from Amazon for prizes. However the response was no where as good as it could have been. Perhaps we could do something slightly different, anyone got any ideas?

Jane

I got some ideas!

I am working on the idea of a real time voting system.

I was thinking of several different awards, probably quite a complex rule set where
sites are rated online by visitors.

Therefore nobody has the final decision on the winners etc, they are purely chosen by the voters.

Very democratic.

If possible though I would like to include technical merits such as good use of layout, meta tags, image compression etc etc etc.

Now that sounds like a good idea. Would you be prepared to put together a proposal for me Simon?

And then run it for me?

Cheers

Jane

I should get some time later this week hopefully!,

I will then put a proposal together and see what you think!

If anyone else has any input on what they would like to see included then drop me
a line or add a message!

Excellent look forward to hearing from you

Jane

Simon, Jane,
When planning for another round of awards, bear in mind that the last competition was run in June of 2002, so to make it an annual event, the "final count" should be made at around that time! (Of course that does not preculed starting a lot earlier, especially if there is set-up work to do - for the on-line rating idea, for example.)

A couple of things to think about from the last competition:
- how do you avoid bias in the shortlisting? (In the 2002 competition, I did the shortlisting according to my own criteria [a long list of issues for theatrical sites], which I did not publish! Thus purely my bias on what I think makes a good or bad amateur theatre web site.)
- how do you avoid bias in the voting? There were several sites whose supporters did a good job of "whipping-in" - that is to say, they got lots of votes from their own society members, rather than from people who had visited lots of web sites and had made an informed selection. Whilst one objective criterion might be "Does the website have loyal supporters?" This should not be the only criterion! (I can imagine a voting system that left a cookie after a visit to the shortlisted sites and would only allow voting if the potential voter had a full set of cookies. )

Simon, whilst I agree with your idea for some technical criteria (use of Meta Tags, etc.), I think that you are into a specialist area which should be judged by an "expert panel", rather than by public vote. The public should vote on the basis of "what is the site like for a user", rather than how that is achieved.

Good luck!

Stuart

Stuart,

I quite liked the way the award scheme was ran last year!

I would like to do it very much in the same way but have a real time result, as you say with cookies and IP tracking to avoid double votes!

I was thinking maybe we should have the vote box for the particular site on the site that is entered?

I was thinking, that way they at least have to visit the site but maybe that will prove a little too difficult!

Another feature we could consider trying to include is making sure that everyone visits all the sites before they vote.

As you say working to a summer date is a good idea, then it is an annual event. I do think it would be very good if we spent a lot of time developing it. The more interest we can get, the more awards and categories we can create.

Regards

If you're going to give technical merit awards then you're needing a technical panel of judges?

A popular award could be driven by a simple public vote? Easy enough to cheat if you know how to delete your cookies, so maybe no point worrying about it.


just some thoughts

We would need a panel of technical judges, in order to make sure scoring etc is impartial.

With regards to cookies etc, I think with IP tracking as well it would be extremely difficult to fake results.

I know it is possible but the chances are limited and if someone did do it, I am hoping the volume of other votes would make it not worthwhile.

that's all sounding quite involved - is there a package that can do it already on the shelf?

It all sounds like it's getting very complicated for what was originally supposed to be a fun event. It appears that to attempt to make it 'fool-proof' someone is going to have to do a lot of work.

It will not be fool proof and at the end of the day it will be hard to spot a cheater but the whole aim of the awards need to be kept in context.

My understanding is that the award scheme is run to promote interest in Amateur Drama and try and drive trafffic to sites and get those people to visit again and again and hopefully join.

I am gainst the idea of an overall winner, I think they should be more excellence awards where several sites win the awards.

It's the taking part that counts! not the winnning!

(At the end of the day it is really just another way of attracting interest to Amateur Drama and theatre)

I do have an off the shelf package in mind and I am testing something at the moment. It is not 100% fool proof but as I say at the end of the day I don't think that matters too much!

I think this is a good idea bearing in mind the comments Simon and Lazybee make.

For software, suggest you try:

FreePolls
http://www.freepolls.com/
I've used them before on my own site. Not sure if they can handle a multi-site popularity contest but worth investigating. If I remember rightly, they could handle cookie and ip tracking.

Hotscripts
http://www.hotscripts.com/
Again, used them before for a very large variety of prebuilt scripting needs. Dunno if they have something that could do this but I'd be surprised if they didn't.

CGI Resource Centre
http://cgi.resourceindex.com/
Haven't used them so much but worth a trty if you don't find anything else.

Other resourcecs include...

Absolute Freebies
http://www.absolutelyfreebies.com/webmaste...tuff/polls.html

No Junk Free
http://www.nojunkfree.com/webmaster/polls.asp

... the list goes on. Do a search in Google.

p.s. oooh, this looks promising
http://www.cgiexpo.com/Scripts/85_CGI_Scri...agement_Awards/
http://www.mycgiscripts.com/resources/Web_...s_and_Contests/

ok it sounds like Simon has put a lot of work into this and you are right, I'm picking too many holes.

it sounds excellent, when can we start?

It all a bit of fun at the end of the day, cheers for the links Zorro!

I have been testing different polls to be honest and as yet I have not found one that is 100% what I think we need, I have not checked those links yet as it is a little late.

We may need to employ both Ged and Zorro to assist in the setting up of this award scheme!

I think then if my mermory serves me right, we have got Jane, Ged and Stuart that are also wanting to adjudicate.

Apologies if I get this wrong!

I will try and get something together, I will send a link to you guys and gals to look at then you can all pass comments and add your own skills to improve it.

I have only got basic skills but I know Zorro has done this sort of thing before and Ged is well up on his PHP so we should make sure we use all these skills.

excellent, it'll be a fun thing for the spring.

who's hosting the presentation night ?

Now there's a thought - a weekend away for all the amdramers!! With an award presentation and we get to meet everyone!!

Jane

What a fantastic idea, our own little 'Oscars', though in a fun way. Glamour, glitz and an excuse to buy a new suit. I'll happily travel to any venue.

Not that I don't like praise, but before this all goes to my head I should just own up and admit that:
- those links were from a 10 minute google-search, not from experience
- I haven't used poll/vote software before (except freepolls)
- I can't code php per se, although am dangerous enough to edit/customise pre-written scripts

Still, willing to help if I can .

Zorro,

I think you just summarised my abilities there!

I think at the end of the day we are going to just have a go at it and see what it looks like, if anyone can suggest inprovements and how they should be implemented then we will go for it!

I think thats the nest way to do this. I have not much experienced except tinkering with prewritten scripts!

I used to be a professional web designer having expertise in Flash, Director, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks etc.

I think this is a great idea and if I can be of any help please let me know.



I am a member of St Josephs Players in Leigh Lancashire and am currently re designing their site.

Regards.

Dave Grime

I remember the original awards. It was fun. Yes lets do it again.

And the nominees are.....

Have we got a list of all the awards? Who won last year?

Yes, can we have a list of who won and the web addresses so we can all go see what a good site should look like?

All you need to do is Look Here!

And to bear in mind that there were three level of bias:
1. The nominations were frequently self-selecting (at least in the "good" categories")
2. I whittled the total set of nominations down to 5 in each category - so heavily dependent on what I thought constituted a good web site, and there were lots of good sites which just missed the cut
3. There is a natural tendency for group members to vote for their own sites, which therefore favoured the bigger companies.

Just out of curiousity, I visited the "bad" sites five minutes ago.
CRODS don't appear to have updated their site since 2002.

Stagefright threw up a bunch of pop-up windows, including one telling me to download some sort of plug in. When I refused, it caused Internet Explorer to crash.

Salutary experience.

Nice to see that the winning site was quite a simple one and not one of those flashy monstrosities you see... although I confess I found the winning site a bit TOO packed with info.