This year's competition featured 40 strong entries.
Judging was done in 3 rounds. Each club entered is required to
provide a reviewer who would evaluate web sites of 10 other clubs.
Results of this review are used to select the top 6 large and
top 6 small club web sites for final judging. Finally, each clubs
reviewer whose club made it through the first round was asked
to review all the other clubs to determine the top 3 large and
top 3 small clubs. A panel of judges was then used to select
an overall "best site".
Eligibility
To be eligible sites had to be current RRCA clubs with web sites listed on Jan 1, 2006. They also were required to have a link to the RRCA from their home page.
Judging Criteria
Judging is done in each of two categories, small clubs with 250 members or less, and large clubs with over 250 members. Three Top Sites are picked in each division. We don't do first, second and third. They are all winners!
Finally, one site is picked from among these six as the Best Site for 2006.
The judging criteria are listed below.
- First Impression
- Layout/Graphic Design
- Ease of Navigation
- Use of Technology
- Depth of Content
- Up to Date
- Uniqueness/Personality
- Contribution to RRCA
Here are this year's winners:
2006 Large Club Top Sites (listed alphabetically)
2006 Small Club Top Sites (listed alphabetically)
2006 Best Site
Proving once again that you don't need a big organization, (65 members), to have a great web site, Webmaster/Club President Joe Malinowski is a repeat winner from 2004. The Best Site award will be presented at this year's RRCA convention in Houston.
Comments
Again, my thanks to all the club reviewers for their help looking at the pages. Without the help of these reviewers, it would be impossible to reduce the judging job down to anything manageable. Special thanks to Freddi Carlip, Jean Knaack and Bryan Finke who helped do the final judging.
The six clubs in awarded the "Top Site" award all had their own strengths. In the end the "RidgeRunners" had what most felt was the most personality. Comments like "looks like a fun, friendly and active club" were made by the reviewers. They also had the most support for the RRCA through the news feed, RRCA calendar link and references to the organization.
If you are building a club web site, take a good look at these 6 examples, their structure, layout and content. If you are trying to improve your web site look deeper into how some of these sites are implemented with the new technologies available. But most of all, try to capture the personality of your club and show it up front.
Warren Finke RRCA webmaster