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Christian Website 2008

PURPOSE: As the Internet becomes more and more a part of our society's daily life, it is becoming imperative that a church have a website promoting its ministries, focus and reliance on the Bible. The purpose of this event is to provide opportunity and experience to individuals wishing to serve in developing in this new communications medium.

PROCESS: Participants will:

• Complete the creation of a Christian website.
• Send the web site or notification of participation via email to the Event Director on or before the deadline for pre-convention events. The communication must containing the following information:
  • Congregation name
  • Name of participants
  • Age of participants
• Make the web site available in one of the following media:
  • Internet accessible URL of the site that is to be judged.
  • A zipped file containing the whole website.
  • If zipped file is too large to email and an internet address is not available the site may be mailed to the Event Director recorded on a CDROM. It must be post marked by the pre-convention event due date.

PROCESS: THE EVENT DIRECTOR WILL:

• Send confirmation of notification email receipt via reply email.
• Coordinate selection of judges with ability, experience and qualifications to judge the entries.
• Report critique results to the Awards Committee.

RULES:

1. This is a team event. The team may consist of as few as one or as many as three people. Equal representation of participants must be evident.
2. The site must make use of the Internet to glorify God through content and general presentation.
3. The site content and construction is open. It must, however, be related in some fashion with the theme of LTC.
4. There will be three grade levels in this event:
   Grades 6-8, 9-10,11-12
5. Each participant may only participate once in the Christian Website event.
6. Website content (photography, text, video, audio, graphics, code, etc.) shall not be added or modified after the "entrance time."
7. Each website must consist of at least eight pages and no more than twenty-five pages with links that inter-connect all of the pages in a useful manner.
8. There should be no "dead" links. This would include "Coming soon" or "Under construction" links. Offsite references must be verified prior to submission. The website should be complete.
9. Only one base URL may be submitted for judging. Any and all pages that reside at or below the base URL will be included in the judged website.
10. Assistance given to the participants shall be limited to that of instruction, advice and supervision.
11. Personal email addresses of participants must not appear in the site. Instead use an alternate email address, just for the LTC-SW event. Example: 'WebMaster@my church.org'. The email address does not have to be valid. (This is to protect the participant)
12. Artwork created or modified specifically for the website, must be the work of the participants and indicated as such by a copyright.
13. The original work of others shall be respected. Copyrighted material not owned by the participants must not be used without permission. All copyrighted material must be marked as such.
14. The web site must be written using standard HTML compatible with IE 5.0 or greater as well as Netscape 6 or greater. Avoid Microsoft IE only extensions such as DHTML.
15. Use of tools such as Visual Studio®, Front Page®, Hot Dog® and Netscape Composer® is permitted.
16. Pages should be formatted to be viewed on an 800x600 resolution screen.
17. If the website will be using any form of CGI or server side scripting the participant must discuss its use with the Event Director prior to designing that portion of the website.

Notes:
• Free hosting of your website can be an inexpensive way to get your pages on the Internet. The downside is that many of these require the presence of banners and other advertisements that detract from the intended message of a Christian website.
• There are lots of websites that offer free graphics or graphics that are free to non-profit organizations.
• A "website" as the term is used in this event description does not mean that it must be an independent web address. A "website" can also be a collection of pages appearing "beneath" or branching off of a church website.

A few helpful references . . .

• All About Designing for the Web by Web Developer® Staff
• A Beginner's Guide to HTML, created at NCSA, a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Copyright 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
• Web Developers Virtual Library, by Internet.com Corp.
• A Guide to Web evangelism, Produced by SOON Gospel Literature

JUDGING:

• There will be three Judges.
• Judges will have experience, ability and qualifications to judge website entries.
• Award rating will be assigned based on the point average between the three Judges.
• The Event Director reserves the right to adjust points awarded by judges.

AWARDS:
Each team will be rated according to the following point scale:

Gold = 95-100;   Silver = 85-94;   Bronze = 70-84;   No Award = 0-69

An appropriately colored engraved plate for the individuals Award Plaque will be given to each participant receiving a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Rating.

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