Topsite Awards!

[OS-Mark]

The results are in, Polls are closed. Congratulations to the winners, you have all done a great job building your topsite. I look forward to our next set of topsite awards

Peoples choice:

1. Forgotten Memories Topsite -> 13
2. BBCentral -> 10
3. Top100Arcades -> 8


Most Popular New Topsite:
www.bbcentral.org






Have you done some crazy mods to your topsite? Have a killer skin? Or maybe you just found a great niche and your site has grown very fast. Enter in the OSempire topsite awards program and be rewarded for your excellent webmaster-ing.

Each winner will recieve 1 free - 1 year domain name registration! + plus a featured page on osempire.com No bullshit or strings attatched Plus we'll also give you a shiny award to add to your topsite (optional of course). Don't need a domain name? we can also offer you custom button design or some web hosting. Don't need that either? then enter for the fun of it.

How to enter: Reply to this post with the URL to your topsite, and any notes about what makes your topsite special (optional)....

Thats it.

How are winners decided? By a public poll.


Questions? Also post reply here.




nomineeeees:
www.lighthousesites.com/
www.mapzone.net/topsites
www.top100arcades.com
www.runescape100.com
http://topsites.forgottenmem.net
http://www.bbcentral.org
http://tswpn.thesmokylounge.com/podcasts/

[OS-Mark]

Who's going to be first?

[mattius]

Hehe how about the site you designed top100arcades.com. Ive got some good news to report on that site as well.

It now ranks #1 in google for the keyword search "Arcade topsite". Im pretty happy about that..next update should be PR5 as well. I made some slight alterations to the original...very slight...and made sure it conforms with xhtml 1.0 standard.

Looks pretty sweet eh?

Got an arcade? Dont forget to hook it up..

[Burta]

Originally Posted by mattius

Hehe how about the site you designed top100arcades.com. Ive got some good news to report on that site as well.

That's a sweet topsite! I love the design and the good use of the different shades of orange. Definitely will be tough to beat.

Whilst I don't think I will beat top100arcades.com I'll submit my Runescape 100 topsite for fun .

Well I wouldn't say that I have any killer mods or a killer skin, but I suppose the skin I do have is not bad even though it's a bit out of date. The best thing I have going for my skin I suppose is the fact it is unique.

So what else is good about my topsite:

-- Well it has 1500 registered members of which 700 are active (by active I mean they have had at least 1 unique visitor in the last 10 days).
-- My topsite receives close to 3000 unique visitors a day and ranks well in Google for countless terms making it the most popular topsite in its industry.
-- It has a nice intro text section which I really like.
-- It has a basic rewrite mod
-- One of my favorite little things about it is it's category rankings which are set up to rank the sites by votes in rather than unique hits to promote the sites that are listed to actually advertise their buttons regardless of if they receive that much traffic or not.
-- It has a nice little articles section where visitors and site owners are allowed to submit Runescape articles.
-- It has easy an convenient installation instructions and a brief ten page guide of how to improve your own site's popularity.
-- It's the most popular topsite in it's industry.

I don't know what else is special...

[Basti]

http://www.bbcentral.org

iam entering too, with the wonderfull skin of nevadabadgirl
iam ranked on site 3 on google with the keyword myspace topsites
and recieve around 3000-3500 average and on good days around 5000 - 10000 ( yesterday 11000 )

p.s now over 300 members in just 1 month and a half, around 20-30 members each day

well i dont have any special mods installed, cos i kinda dont need them

[KellyW]

I would like to submit my site/skin that i finally finished today with Mark and Kobys help. I am in the process of cleaning up my personal code out of the skin to make it clean for distribution. Then I just need to make up a quick readme file for setting up a few things then i will post it here for public use.

Check it out here:
www.mapzone.net/topsites

Edit: Here are some of the aditions/changes for my skin.

List of changes/additions:

1. Removed members ability to add banners.

2. Changed featured_member.html to Site introduction/infomation box. I left a backup of the featured member file in the skin directory in case you wanted to add it back in. (featured_member.html.bak)

3. Added a CSS2 navigation menu. You can edit the menu properties in default.css

4. Moved links around on the stats page for easier viewing.

5. Added an RSS feed for the News box. To change the news edit news.xml located in the skin directory. To edit the look of the News display box including sizes, scroll delay, text and colors look in the file vscroll_data.js.

6. Added meta tags to wrapper.html and a link to display a Live bookmark link for the RSS feed in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 Beta. You will have to add the keywords and desc for site in meta tags.

7. Skin is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS valid.

8. All Javascripts required by the skin reside in the skins folder, no external files needed.

9. Added Site Rules box to join_form.html.

10. Up, down and neutral image links for ranks have been removed but are still in the directory if you want to re-add them.

11. Added BookMark us script that works in IE and displays text for Firefox.

If I forgot anything else I removed, the original files should still be in the skin directory so you can quickly add it back in including graphics. All original functions of Aardvark still work too if they are missing just add the tags back in. There is a pretty good readme.txt file that explains how to edit the news.xml and the style for the news box.

I put in a generic logo and background image you can change to fit your site, you will probably want to change the colors too but it is pretty easy and all in the CSS file. This skin has an extremely low load time as is.

[OS-Mark]

Some really slick topsites, awesome job to everyone!

I'll be opening the polls in a couple of days.

[Basti]

ahh i cant wait anymore for the poll lol
when will you launch the voting

[OS-Mark]

alright I have opened the poll

This poll will decide the "People's Choice" award.

[Basti]

awww, iam such a pusher lol
thanks for that mark

How many votes does the winner site need? or how long will it run?

[OS-Mark]

its good, I often need a push

The polls will close in 15 days, then the totals from here and the aardvark forum will be combined to produce the "Peoples Choice" winner

[gamecock]

Gosh, I am pleased to see my entry has got a couple of votes already...

You mentioning my list's PageRank has brought in some extra visitors too.

If you don't mind, can it be listed as "Top 25 Lighthouse Web Sites List"?

By the way, take a look at this impressive #1-5 result from MSN Search:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q...list&FORM=QBRE

Out of THOUSANDS of top site lists, this result showing my pages ranked 1,2,3,4+5 out of 75+ MILLION other pages found for "web sites list" is just Amazing! Bill Gates' crew must like my design style for some reason.

[OS-Mark]

Originally Posted by gamecock

Gosh, I am pleased to see my entry has got a couple of votes already...

You mentioning my list's PageRank has brought in some extra visitors too.

If you don't mind, can it be listed as "Top 25 Lighthouse Web Sites List"?

updated your listing, I'll be lnking the titles later today so you all get a semi-decent backlink out of it.

By the way, take a look at this impressive #1-5 result from MSN Search:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q...list&FORM=QBRE

Out of THOUSANDS of top site lists, this result showing my pages ranked 1,2,3,4+5 out of 75+ MILLION other pages found for "web sites list" is just Amazing! Bill Gates' crew must like my design style for some reason.

hehe thats cool, not often you see that.

[Burta]

Unfortunaetly my topsite was hacked 10 days ago and I haven't been able to get it back up and running. I'll be doing my best to get it up and running before the poll closes.

[OS-Mark]

just goes to show the impression your site left, even with your site offline still got votes! That should be worth an award of its own

[Koby]

How come the other topsites have their topsite name, and mine just says forgottenmem?

Could you please change it to: Forgotten Memories Topsite

thanks =P.. it looks like we are winning on aardvark and here too.

[KellyW]

I thought my theme would do a little better that it has... Oh well..

It has alot of cool options added andreally is based on the number 1 voted by Koby. Guess people dont like my additions.

[Burta]

Originally Posted by KellyW

I thought my theme would do a little better that it has... Oh well..

It has alot of cool options added andreally is based on the number 1 voted by Koby. Guess people dont like my additions.

LOL I think your topsite is killer when it comes to features and optimisation, but the thing it lacks more than anything is members and graphics... and that is what people would most likely be voting for. Let's face it people are going to look at your pictures and design before they check your source code to see that you have some well optimised features integrated into your site. I actually went to your site the other day and your design gave me some great ideas of my own... so thanks and good work:

lg

Oh and just so everyone knows, Runescape 100 is back up and running!

[KellyW]

Oh my bad... I thought this was a skin design contest not a popularity contest. I think I may add the images function back in. The problem was my hosts php doesnt support the image size checker and I didnt want to have to approve everything manually.

I will be posting a second version with image support.

[OS-Mark]

nah Kelly not your bad at all By me asking people to simply vote for their favorite it makes the whole contest rather dependant on what people like the most. Some might vote for a site because of its design, some for the popularity, some for the mods etc. I had hoped to have more entries so we could have had a category for each but that didnt happen Next time I do this, I'll organize it better and lay down some ground rules that will help keep things fair.

[OS-Mark]

Koby and Basti - Congrats on the win! Let me know what you prefer with regards to a prize

1year domain registration or 6 months web Hosting

also if you want the award badge, let me know what size you prefer, and I'll make it up for you.

Congrats again guys, and thanks to everyone who participated and voted

[Koby]

468x60 award badge. And I guess a domain..

[Burta]

Congratulations guys they are definitely some top topsites!

[Basti]

wow, thanks everyone :-D

i dont need a domain or hosting, so just a award thingie would be cool :-)

size could be 120 x 90 or a lil smaller, thanks

[Koby]

Hey OSMark.. can we discuss the prizes instead? I don't really need a domain name.

Could you consider a logo and a matching favicon instead? I could really use one, and I saw how good you are with logo's. =P

[OS-Mark]

HI Koby, unfortunately the value of a logo design is about 10x that of a domain name... If I had time I would certainly help out, but I got none these days

You dont need to redeem the domain name right now, I'm not going anywhere who knows maybe you'll need it in the not so distant future.

[OS-Mark]

wow did I really procrastinate on this one

here is your well deseved award

[Koby]

Thanks Mark!

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by OS-Mark

Koby and Basti - Congrats on the win!

Koby, please accept my belated congratulations on your win. I would've LOVED to earn that honor!

You certainly got a slick-looking banner ad you can use for bragging rights too!

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by OS-Mark

hehe thats cool, not often you see that.

True, but WOW!

Just for fun, I just checked that link (MSN Search for "web sites list") again.

The "BAD" news is my site is NOT #1 anymore, nevermind numbers 1 to 5.

The GOOD news is I now have SEVEN of Top 10 results (2,3,4,5,7,8 + 10)!

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q...list&FORM=QBRE

I hope to get my NEW TSL project (see sig) listed in there sometime soon.

Wish me GOOD LUCK as I'm about to duke it out with 70+ Million pages!

[agire_sores@msn.com]

Look at my web site
MalperistaN

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by agire_sores@msn.com

Look at my web site

I really like how you incorporated Google PR rank into your data for each site!

Hmmm... I wonder how hard it would be to add that to a default fusion skin?

[pinkgarden]

Will there be another one of these contests?

I would love to submit my topsite list at some point just to see what people think of it.

It has been around for over a year and is rather popular and I am really pleased with the current layout.

www.pinkgarden.co.uk/ts

[Burta]

I'm also thinking that you might need to make this contest quarterly Mark - but that said I don't know if you'd get a great deal more entrants next time around...

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by pinkgarden

Will there be another one of these contests?

I hope it will become an annual competition, around the same time of year.

Originally Posted by pinkgarden

I would love to submit my topsite list at some point just to see what people think of it.?

Well, I know I am VERY impressed you got everything to validate properly, although you have a few descriptions using unescaped & (ampersands) at the moment, which is causing a fail at the W3C Validator. I'd LOVE to figure out a few things that have been holding me back from 100% compliance. Oh, and if a member uses an & themselves, I will change that to either "and" or "+".

Originally Posted by pinkgarden

It has been around for over a year and is rather popular and I am really pleased with the current layout.

You SHOULD be reallyy pleased! I can't think of a single other ATS that can pass the W3C online validator test as yours can. All of mine can pass the W3C Tidy test, but that's a good bit easier. HOW did you manage to do that?

I have tried to gently push Jeremy to clean up a few things in the last few releases that made a big difference towards making his script being fully compliant. That helped make what YOU did possible, so I'm proud of you too!

Maybe I/we need to start a new thread on how to fix those things required? I would appreciate if you could share how you were able to do what you've done!

[OS-Mark]

I will do another contest, it will probably be a yearly thing to ensure a fair # of entries

As for the validation, I posted intructions for strict xHTML validation as long time ago, it might be of use... but knowing what I do now I realize it probably should have been strict HTML... potatoe - potato

http://www.osempire.com/community/showthread.php?t=6841

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by Burta

I'm also thinking that you might need to make this contest quarterly

I disagree. An annual competition has MUCH more prestige! Are there any quarterly Oscars or Grammys?

Originally Posted by Burta

but that said I don't know if you'd get a great deal more entrants next time around...

Well, that's probably another reason to keep it as an annual event - more entries!

[gamecock]

Originally Posted by OS-Mark

I will do another contest, it will probably be a yearly thing to ensure a fair # of entries

Well, I already know which new TSL site I will be entering THIS year! Hehe

Originally Posted by OS-Mark

As for the validation, I posted intructions for strict xHTML validation as long time ago, it might be of use... but knowing what I do now I realize it probably should have been strict HTML... potatoe - potato

Yeah, I have a few minor things I still need to get straight just for full Transitional, which will be just fine for me. Starting with Tidy usually works best and I've done that already. My external banner exchange code complicates things for me a little, but I would greatly appreciate any/all advice on that! But, I have another BIG goal I'm trying to accomplish first.

BTW, I got 4 sites from 3 different new states signed up for The Top Sites of America Web Sites yesterday, so that gives me a small cushion for my goal.

I recently had another person tell me there's "NO WAY" I can get webmasters from all 50 States to sign up in only 50 days. That gives me MORE incentive!

[OS-Mark]

Originally Posted by gamecock

Yeah, I have a few minor things I still need to get straight just for full Transitional, which will be just fine for me. Starting with Tidy usually works best and I've done that already. My external banner exchange code complicates things for me a little, but I would greatly appreciate any/all advice on that! But, I have another BIG goal I'm trying to accomplish first.

Well when your ready to get all your code validated feel free to post in the HTML forum, wont be a problem.

BTW, I got 4 sites from 3 different new states signed up for The Top Sites of America Web Sites yesterday, so that gives me a small cushion for my goal.

I recently had another person tell me there's "NO WAY" I can get webmasters from all 50 States to sign up in only 50 days. That gives me MORE incentive!

hehe I'm sure you'll do it. Might get a little close in final days though.

[Burta]

Maybe you could sweeten the deal Mark and get even more entries if you put something on your homepage like "Topsite of the Year" with a link to the winners site. You might even be a bigger hero if you could somehow get Jeremy to somehow get on board and maybe make it so that he can start a list in his demo or featured topsites section where he posts each years winner... that would be COOL!