Mandy's Depression Homepage - Mandy's Awards Programme

When I first started this site, I put up an awards programme where visitors could win my award but I took it down when I redesigned the site. I've now got a lot more information here and I've seen a lot more sites out there that I feel should be recognised. I remember only too well how hard those first weeks and months were and how much I craved recognition because it gave me the motivation to keep on adding to my site. I'd like to do my bit to help to recognise those sites now.

Sooo, if you have a mental health related site that you've been working tirelessly on and pouring your heart, soul, sweat, blood and tears into (like I've been doing constantly with this site) that you feel deserves to be recognised because of all the hard work you have put into it, then keep on reading! If you have come to this page because you want another trophy to decorate your site with, don't bother applying for this one.

So what am I looking for and how do you apply?

What I'm looking for is as individual as each site, so maybe it'd be easier to say what I'm *not* looking for and what will get you disqualified:

If you have any copyrighted material on your site you should have a clear (unbroken) link and permission from the copyright holder to use their work. Copyright infringement is a *major* ranty thing for me 'cos I've had so much of this site stolen so if you use someone else's work without their permission and/or without giving credit where credit is due, you'll be in my bad books before I even start looking at your site and if I know who the copyright holder is I will be emailing them with the URL of your site to let them know you are breaking the law.

If you have triggering content on your site, that's cool, but you *must* warn me. If you don't have a warning *on the page* that is *clearly visible* (no pop-up boxes with warnings please) with triggering content and I get triggered, this will also put you in my bad books. The reason I say this is that I get my husband to check through anything with warnings to make sure it won't trigger me. If you think your content *will* trigger me, don't worry though, that won't disqualify you - as long as you have the warning there :o)

If you steal someone's bandwidth without their knowledge or permission this will also put you in my bad books - when you have your own domain, bandwidth is very expensive!!

Don't send me an email saying "You do awards on your site. Give me one". Depending on my mood at the time, if I get an email like this, it will either go straight in the bin or I'll send a reply back saying "Yes I do and no I won't". I don't like rude people and I won't put up with it. Saying please and thank you can get you a long way in this life.

I *hate* prejudice with a vengeance. If your site is in any way prejudiced towards anyone or anything, don't bother applying.

If your site isn't mental health related, don't apply. If I come across a website that isn't mental health related but that I think deserves extra special recognition I may consider giving them a special award, but you *cannot* apply for these special awards. Please, by all means, let me know about any sites you feel deserve the extra recognition 'cos it's the only way I'm going to know about them, but these are special awards for a reason :o)

If your site promotes any form of illegal activity (child pornography, warez, r*pe etc) don't apply - if you do, I will report you to the relevant authorities. If you are the *victim* of an illegal activity and through your site you are trying to raise awareness and help others to come to terms with what has happened to them (like I'm doing with my r*pe on this site) then you are more than welcome to apply!

If your website crashes my browser more than twice I won't be coming back for a third visit and/or if I pick up any nasties (viruses, someone trying to hack me etc) while I'm at your website, I'll be reporting you to your ISP/webhost. Needless to say, you also won't be getting an award.

There are some things that will make me mutter under my breath and/or annoy me, that I would prefer not to see, but they won't put you in my bad books and they won't get you disqualified. These are things like pop-up boxes asking me to download things (Comet cursors etc... I've already got all the programmes I want, thank you!), mouse trailers (it's too distracting!), music on the pages (I like listening to my own music while I'm looking at sites. If there's a particular piece you want me to hear, give me the opportunity to decide for myself if I want to hear it or not), pages that take forever to load (I've still got a dial-up connection so be kind to me, please!!), "under construction" notices (all good sites are *constantly* under construction - this one is!), broken links (broken external links are forgivable, internal ones are not), those "no right-click" scripts (I like all my external links to open in a new window and that's the only way I can do it sometimes so it annoys me like crazy when someone stops me from doing that)... just little things like that. If you have any of these on your site, don't worry though, it won't go against you, it just won't put me in a very good mood ;o)

I think that just about covers the things I'm not looking for, so, how do you apply?

Well, I like people to be original and I don't want you to only see this page of my site, so, with that in mind, all I will tell you about how to apply is that the only way I'm going to know about your site is if you tell me. How do you tell me? There are lots of ways to let me know about your site dotted all over this site - the only way to let me know about your site is to use one of those methods. I'm not going to tell you which pages they are on because I want you to see the rest of my site... these awards are just a very small part of my site and I want you to see the rest of my site, not just my awards.

You may also be wondering why there aren't any examples of my awards on this page. I don't want people to take them off this page and claim they have won my award when I've never even seen their website. So, by not putting examples on here I'm taking away part of that temptation. There are still ways you can steal my award if that's what you really want to do, but if you do that, maybe you should stop for a minute and think about why you are doing it? Is it because you don't think your site meets my criteria? Why not? How can you change it so that it *does*? Go on, apply, you might be surprised! :o)

What sort of awards do I offer? I don't want to give too much away 'cos then the element of surprise won't be there, but the "I've Been Bookmarked!" award is equivalent to a platinum award as so few sites make it into my bookmarks so I guess that one is the ultimate one to aim for... there are various others too, but you'll just have to apply and see what happens to find out what they are!! ;o)

You can see a list of the winners of my various awards here - all the websites are well worth a visit!!