Award Program

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Introduction

Welcome to the Alcazarén Award Program (AP).

Enjoy your visit to this program and, if you are the website owner or webmaster and you feel that your site deserves one of our awards, please apply for it. We wish you good luck during the evaluation process. This is not a giveaway award.

The awards are free of charge and the AP has been on line since 2003-02-07. In the following lines we will try to explain to you more about it. Our most valuable asset, as it should, is the Winners section, you are invited to visit the sites that have earned the Alcazarén award, as we can assure you that you will enjoy an unexpected and gratifying journey when linking to them; please let us know if you have any complaint.

All the graphics displayed in this AP are protected by copyright law and and cannot be utilized without the authorization of their creators.

Awarded with:

Purpose

The purpose that led to the creation and the existence of this AP is as follows:

Award those sites, that being written in Spanish, are to be recognized for their outstanding content, an aspect that was not sufficiently fulfilled by existing Award Programs. The previous reasoning does not limit, in any way, the evaluation result of a website which is not written in Spanish.

Please note that it is the content which is emphasized. A good design is also valuable as long as it enhances its content. Good content is not due to the quantity of information given (very often redundant), but to the knowledge that can be gained from it.

Not mentioned in the purpose but important during the evaluation, is website accessibility, that is, how access to the information by impaired persons is facilitated by the webmaster.
To see the general and accessibility characteristics of this website, click: .

Scope (1)

This AP does not cover all types of websites, the scope has been narrowed in order to make its operation possible. The limitations are as follows:

AP applicant's (owner or webmaster) age has to be 18 years or older. If the law of the applicant’s own country enforces a higher age, this last prevails. This minimum age requirement is enforced by law in several countries (e.g., COPPA in USA) in order to apply for an award, 18 years has been selected as the minimum by this AP in order to cover what is required by the majority of countries.
Due to the evaluation process limitations, the award applicant's native website language needs to be Spanish, English, Portuguese, French or Italian.
Due to the evaluation process limitations (lack of analysis tools), websites with encrypted source code or those made entirely with Flash (or with a similar program) are excluded.
Blogs or Forums are not evaluated; if they are part of a website they will not be considered in the evaluation process. We participate in Forums and support Blogs with caution, but the time required to evaluate their content is far beyond our capabilities.
With regards to the website content type and quantity, some conditions need to be met which are specified in the Qualification section (5cq Qualification Table).

Process

The process that the applicants for the Alcazarén Award must follow is very simple. After reading this window content, the following sections need to be read to ensure that compliance is met and that all the conditions are known:

Graphics. Shows the graphics design and characteristics of the awards that will be displayed in the winning website.
Qualification. Gives characteristics that we look for in an applicant's website in order for an evaluation to take place.
Evaluation criteria and Scoring. Being a site within the scope of this AP, the evaluation will be done according to the shown criteria and scoring evaluation.
Award request. Explains how to request the award, the evaluation time frame and the conditions that both the applicant and this AP are required to comply with. It also refers to what is required for a re-evaluation, and when a given award may be cancelled.
Request Form. The form that should be completed and forwarded to this AP when applying for an award.

Applicants are also recommended to visit the following sections:

Code of Ethics, Privacy and copyright. Indicates the required ethical code that the evaluators follow and this website's privacy policy and copyright.
Evaluators. Evaluator profiles, shown as a courtesy to the AP applicants.
Affiliations. The AP has different ratings and memberships. This, in addition to the two aforementioned items, is an indication of our seriousness and responsibility.
Winners. The last and most valued section. All the Alcazarén award winners are listed. Statistical information is also provided.

In order to facilitate navigation between the different sections, "Next" arrows (forward and backward) have been added at the bottom right of all the AP sections, the sequence that they follow is as shown in the above two lists (the same order is also followed by the AP menu items).

You are invited to visit the Alcazarén AP forum to gather more information about this AP, awards and APs in general. If you have any question or comment, please, do not hesitate to post it in there.

The Alcazarén AP forum is hosted in:

Award Program

Introduction

Purpose

Scope (1)

Process

Related links