Golden Spider Awards Applying?

joePC

Hi all,

Was wondering how do you apply for the Golden spider awards, I was on the site from last year but the email address used is no longer in service.

Any ideas on where to go?

Thanks JoePC

dahamsta

Originally posted by joePC
Any ideas on where to go?

The pub, buy yourself a few pints with the money. Golden Spiders my arse.

joePC

I dont have a clue what your taking about dahamsta,

Thanks JoePC

mneylon

Originally posted by joePC
I dont have a clue what your taking about dahamsta,

Thanks JoePC

Joe

What Adam is saying is own way is that the Golden Spiders are not considered by a lot of Irish ICT professionals to be a very good reflection of the current state of Irish web dev etc.

Normally they release information on how to apply, including the submission fees, a few months in advance.

joePC

Thanks for the info Blacknight, I wasn't aware of that.

Thanks JoePC

blobert

I tried emailing these folks as well and got no response.

If the Golden Spiders aren't rated highly, are there any other awards which are better that you can tell us about....

pork99

I think the trick to winning a Golden Spider is to sponsor a category.

A former employer of mine did this and guess what? We were shortlisted one year and won the following year!

So it's actually quite easy to win, just sponsor a category and away ye go!

joePC

sponsor a category

Pay to win is it?

Thanks JoePC

blobert

Does one have to pay to enter, and any idea how much??

mneylon

Originally posted by blobert
Does one have to pay to enter, and any idea how much??

From what I recall you have to pay to enter most of the categories except for "personal site" and a couple of others. I can't remember how much the fee was.

pork99

Originally posted by joePC
Pay to win is it?

Thanks JoePC

All depends on the size of yer wad

(my employer at the time was a major financial institution)

joePC

Awards where you pay to enter......hummm sounds like
pork99 has a good point.

Anyways would still like some info, Anyone know how much it costs?

Thanks JoePC

pork99

Originally posted by joePC
......hummm sounds like
pork99 has a good point.

don't mind me - a few years of being a corporate wage slave in that place turned me into an embittered cynic :dunno:

jmcc

Originally posted by blacknight
Joe

What Adam is saying is own way is that the Golden Spiders are not considered by a lot of Irish ICT professionals to be a very good reflection of the current state of Irish web dev etc.

Normally they release information on how to apply, including the submission fees, a few months in advance.

Yeah Adam and Michele are right. The Golden Spiders is not that highly regarded and it really is nothing more than a money making operation for its backers. It provides some high paying companies a PR event but apart from that it is a non-event in the real world.

Real websites are not included unless the owners are gullible enough to pay the inclusion fee. So what you get are a bunch of publicity hungry company owners pushing their sites. It is a very small subset of the number of Irish websites out there and hardly representative of the talent and expertise of the Irish web industry. But if your target market is only the people who attend the GS event go ahead and waste your money entering a site.

Regards...jmcc

mneylon

Maybe it's time for a an independent awards ceremony?

steve-hosting36

The ICT Awards - www.ictexpo.ie ?

mneylon

Originally posted by steve-hosting36
The ICT Awards - www.ictexpo.ie ?

They aren't web development awards.

MrNuked

"boards.ie was founded in 2000. boards.ie won both a Golden Spider award and a Zeddy award in 2001, and was a runner-up in the NIBA awards in 2000."

So I guess other Internet awards include Zeddy (from zeriously.com apparently although I can't access that site) and NIBA. The Irish Internet Association do some too. Googling brought up a page where Kharn said these last ones are fixed.

I think that having an award of any kind is a nice thing to be able to put on the index page of a website tbh.

2003 Golden Spider winner for best personal site:

http://www.worldofpetsireland.com/

This isn't even a personal site. It's tacky. The navigation is counter-intuitive, and the naviagtion menu is a flash movie that takes a little while to load. It's not accessible for disabled users. It's not optimised for search engines.

joePC

Its the most horid site I have ever seen.........

mneylon

Zeriously is gone, which is why you can't find it.

blobert

Crikey, that's a bad site!

MarcusGarvey

Originally posted by blacknight
Maybe it's time for a an independent awards ceremony?

Why don't the Open crowd and the Boards crowd and their ilk (good ilk not bad ilk) do their own awards scheme ? All you need is the cost of a few trophies and room rental.

Everyone can ge sh!tfaced afterwards in some pub. I'm sure a proper transparent judging system can be put in place too.

Seth Brundle

the GS site is not HTML compliant, so how can they credibly judge other sites? If it was based on the appearance of the site then surely that worldofpets.com site wouldn't have won!
Their homepage has 35 errors, most of which are for not containing the alt attribute in the <img> tag - this has implications for people with disabilities.
Furthermore, none of the pages fit on a an 800px wide screen.

mneylon

Originally posted by MarcusGarvey
Why don't the Open crowd and the Boards crowd and their ilk (good ilk not bad ilk) do their own awards scheme ? All you need is the cost of a few trophies and room rental.

The problem would be getting them to agree on a time and a place

Seth Brundle

Originally posted by MarcusGarvey
Why don't the Open crowd and the Boards crowd and their ilk (good ilk not bad ilk) do their own awards scheme ? All you need is the cost of a few trophies and room rental.

Everyone can ge sh!tfaced afterwards in some pub. I'm sure a proper transparent judging system can be put in place too.

Im in favour of something like this. I'll even put my name down as a judge (assume I get paid & expenses). I think we could get loads of sponsorship and maybe even give preference to sites that take out sponsorship or sites for large corporations.
To be fair to sites that are crap, maybe we should give out a few prizes to them.

</end messing>
Back to reality, I think a real, independent and designer/developer credible award system would be a good thing and not difficult to achieve. I dont think it would cost much to organise.

buddy

Originally posted by MrNuked


http://www.worldofpetsireland.com/

Next to this, I'm a web designing God!!

pork99

whatever happened to p45's Wellie awards?

buddy

The award itself is rather nifty all the same.

joePC

Heres the accessibility checklist:

Checklist

Thanks JoePC

pork99

Originally posted by buddy

The award itself is rather nifty all the same.

One of the legs fell off ours

tammy

good grief, world of pets is nasty. I assume it won an award for tackiest site or else was assembled by an infant.