Intro

The phpBBHacks.com Featured phpBB award was the first award dedicated specifically to phpBBs. It was first awarded in February of 2002 and is awarded every month of the year. Like any great award, we ask for nothing in return from our winners.

How can I win?

You can not submit for this award, you are chosen. Winners are selected by Patrick, who finds these phpBBs through various means. So, how can you gain attention? There really is no concrete way. This is part of the mystique of the award. Most people win right out of the blue with absolutely no idea that they were being considered at all.

The only method of possibly gaining attention that is public knowledge is to become a member of the phpBBHacks.com Support Forums and post your site in the phpBB Review forum. There are no guarentees that your site will be looked at, but users who have posted their site in this forum have won several times before.

What shouldn't I do?

Don't start threads about it in our support forums asking us to please consider your site for the award. Don't trash the award or the effort that goes into it if you don't win. Don't private message, instant message or e-mail Patrick or any member of staff asking that your site be considered. This will hurt your chances.

Don't offer to buy this award. Don't offer us a link exchange in exchange for it. This is not ad space - this is a real award.

The absolute best thing that you can do to be considered for the award and win the award is to not care about being considered for the award or winning the award.

What makes a winner?

There is no calculated way that a winner is selected.

It isn't important that your site is loaded with hacks. If you have all of these hacks installed, but poorly integrated, that will hurt you. Although, if you have hacks and they are well integrated, that would work to your favor. One very important factor is your design and your graphics. Having a customized, unique look (which includes customizing the colors and the colors of the graphics of subSilver, at the least) is a big plus. Don't use a distributed template right out of the box. Although we may award a phpBB that is doing so (either on purpose or by accident), the author who created that template is the only one who will can credit for it as "unique". Attention to detail is important.

phpBBHacks.com is an English speaking site, so potential candidates must be, at least, partially in the English language.

Other things can help or hurt you, as well. Such as the content of your community. We aren't going to award communities that have inappropriate content, such as excessive profanity, anything inappropriate for our audience, anything illegal, etc. We are a family and work friendly community wherever we can be and while everyone we award will not be held to that exact standard, we are not going to knowingly award anyone whose community is drastically different from that ideal. We don't have time to read every post on your site. We'll take a 5 minute look and decide upon that. But, if we find anything fishy or inappropriate in that 5 minutes of looking, it makes us wonder what we are missing and your site will be taken out of consideration. Excessively bad grammar and spelling in forum descriptions and documents will also hurt you. Activity and the apparent quality of your community can also help or hurt you, but generally an active site won't hold a big advantage over an inactive site of the same quality - we are awarding phpBB integration and that is always at the forefront.

One requirement that we make is that you must have a phpBB copyright statement of some kind. At the very least, "Powered by phpBB" should be included on your phpBB pages with phpBB linked to http://www.phpbb.com.

Do I have to be affiliated with you to win?

No. Although sites that are in some way affiliated (link exchanges, advertisers, partners, etc.) or run by us have won the award, the affiliation was not something that was considered. If they are somehow affiliated or supportive of us (personally, monetarily or otherwise), that won't hurt them. If they aren't, it won't hurt them. The point being that it doesn't matter and it doesn't enter into the picture. We award the best phpBB integrations that we can find and know of period.