ANY MORE CONTESTS?

The Site of the Month contest is every month.

Just to add to this - we are planning on running some more design contests soon

I have an idea for a contest ...

The SOTM contest ends-up being sort of a venue for advertising web designers, so I'm thinking maybe having a contest that digs a little deeper into design and coding.

Since WDF is not specifically aimed at one programming language, I think it would be fun to have a contest where coding was mixed with some design.

If WDF provided an XML file of where it's members are located, or some other information drawn from it's database (nothing private or personal, just some general information), and we would come up with the most creative and well-designed way to display that information.

You can use any programming language you want (PHP, Perl, ASP, Javascripting, etc), to access the WDF XML file and demonstrate the web page for others to judge.

Everyone would be accessing the same XML file, so that part would be fair.

1) How well designed the page is ... where the information is displayed.
2) How creatively the information is displayed.
3) Mention the language used, and the techniques used.

After the contest, be willing to show some scripting to anyone that wishes to see it. This would be very beneficial to "newbies" ... for PHP, Perl, ASP, etc.

Not only a contest, but a great tutorial/learning experience for all levels of designers/developers. By getting into some WDF database info, we would also get to learn more about the WDF members.

I think this would be a fun contest.

DC856, mind clarifying what you're trying to say?

Maybe he thinks the contest is meaningless?
.... not a contest at all ... just an ego trip.

My thinking is, the contest should benefit others (mostly newbies) as a means
of teaching and learning ... as this is a forum. If the objective was to complete
a task, we would see that there might be several different ways to accomplish it,
and have fun seeing the various results by different people. Maybe it doesn't have
to be a "contest" at all.

DC856, Mike's just explained a bit about what he thinks you may have been saying. You're saying that you dont think its right for people to do all the work, and effectively give it to us (or other community members) without anything in return, correct?

If so, I can assure you that would not be the case. Whilst we not got any contests/dates set in stone, in my view, the contests would go as follows:

We would provide a spec, much like a professional client would. This would be for a made-up company. Some freedom in the spec would allow for each entrant to be creative with both design and function.

For submissions, we wouldn't require any design source files to be submitted if the entrant did not wish to do so. Voting would be done by members in a similar style to the voting system on our Site of the Month contest. It wouldn't be fair for staff to be the sole judges on winners.

Once the contest is over, the awards (depending on the contest) would be given to the winner(s). All designs, code, etc would remain in the hands of the creators, and we would have no rights to them.

I can assure you, we have no wish to get people to do design/code for us for free as part of a contest! Obviously if a designer/coder decides to release their contest entry to the forum members for free, thats great. But nobody would be expected to do so.

Please also remember that contests are supposed to be fun. You start bringing in too many rules and regulations, and it will no longer be worth us running them.

I hope this clears it up. Please feel free to drop me a PM if you do have any concerns you'd like to discuss directly.

I like this idea ...

That would even-out the playing table and make it more fun.