The Transformers Inner Circle Webring Guidelines

  1. Your page must contain content that is directly related to "The Transformers" brand toy line, comics, cartoon, or other marketing venues.
  2. Your page must contain the entire WORKING Inner Circle HTML Code as provided.
  3. The Transformers page you create should be YOUR OWN WORK. Granted, HTML is set up to easily see layouts, etc. from other people's sites. But blatant stealing will NOT BE TOLERATED. If you like what someone else has done, put a link to that person's site, and be creative with your own site. A site does not have to be flashy to be a "good" site -- originality and doing your own work is always better.
  4. Your site must contain adequate content to ensure it will be of interest to a sizeable portion of Transformers fans. In other words, you can have the best looking, best maintained site on the net, but if all there is are a few links to other pages, and your list of toys that you have or want, that just won't cut it. Being one of the best takes more than that.
  5. Your site must meet the following BASIC standards of quality HTML and web page authoring. If you fail to meet these standards, you page will not be added to the ring. If you need help with any of these items, you are welcome to ask other people on the ring for pointers or start learning by going to the Web Design Group home page. These *should* be standard practice for any experienced HTML author, but since I want newbies to get better, here are some of the things that can take a crappy site and make it something worth a link!
    1. There shall not be a preponderance of misspellings, mis-typings, or misplacings of words. The occasional typo and misspelled word and such is OK (I'm sure you have found some here ;-), but if someone goes to your page and finds it difficult to understand for all the bad grammar and poor spelling, then there is an obvious lack of proper maintenance. If your first language is not English, you are encouraged to do your page in your first language, we need more foreign pages anyway.
    2. There shall be an appropriate BODY tag with appropriate attributes! One of the most annoying things is to arrive at a page whose colors are all screwed up. Make sure your colors are actually *viewable*. This means, don't use a really busy background image that causes text on your page to disappear, even for only a letter! It also means that if you use ANY color attributes, you MUST set ALL color attributes. What do you think a page looks like if you specify a black background, but nothing else? Well, if my default text color is black (default for most browsers) then I won't see anything! So, make sure you set ALL the color attributes, AND that they actually look good. Ask someone to check it out for you if necessary. People should not have to disable images and colors just to view your page. This also means that your bgcolor should be as close as possible to your background image. If I have images turned off, and you rely on a dark background image and white text, then I'll see a white page with white text! The point is, be aware of the results of these attributes, and plan their values accordingly.
    3. There shall not be ANY broken images or inactive/incorrect links to items on your site. This does not apply to links to other sites, but any links to pages within your own site should work. No one likes to hear an error beep when there needn't be one. Properly maintained sites do not have broken links to their own pages. If you are still creating a page, simply do not link to it until it is complete, or at least on-line.
    4. There shall be ALT attributes for ALL images. If I turn off "auto load images" in my browser, I should still be able to understand the structure of your page. If an image has no purpose other than to be an image, you should set the Alt="" so that the image is essentially invisible if not loaded. Alt attributes should be chosen wisely. If you are unsure of a proper alt text, refer to the Web Design Group site for some help. The point is, I don't want to be seeing "IMAGE" and "LINK" all over the page in my browser when images are turned off, get it?
    5. There shall be Width and Height attributes for ALL images. Not only does this speed up the viewing/browsing speed of your page, but also this ensures your page is properly formatted even when images are turned off. Not to mention the fact that some images inevitably load slower than others, and without the size attributes can literally make your page useless until that image loads. I know it's happened to you, why would you want it to happen to your visitors?
    6. There shall be an easy to understand and navigate structure to your site. Whether you provide a frame with links, or a row of links on each page, or even an index page that all other pages go back to, people should not be looking around for the "right" page, or getting lost in your frames.
    7. There shall be provisions for all web browsers. If you fill your site with proprietary code that only works in some version of some browser, you need to rethink things. Sure, a little here and there is nice, but if I use a different browser, and your site is virtually empty, what's the point? You should also make sufficient note of any parts of your web page that require certain helper applications or plug-ins, and make them separate from your main page so that people at least have some choice in the matter.
    Again, this ring is for QUALITY sites, not just ANY site, or sites with a lot of bells and whistles.
  6. The Inner Circle HTML Code must be working. This includes having your Site ID entered correctly, and having all links working correctly. You will receive this code in an E-mail as soon as you add your Transformers Web page to the Ring Queue.
  7. The Ringmaster reserves the right to disallow any Transformers Web site to join the queue for any reason. This includes excessive and unwarranted profanity/crudeness, inappropriate and/or offensive material, poor spelling and/or grammar, and the like. While I believe in free speech, with the freedom comes the responsibility to know when and where such speech should be made. The Inner Circle will have a wide audience, and I want it to be accessible to anyone. This also means being able to express your thoughts clearly.
  8. If you feel you have been turned down for an invalid reason, feel free to E-mail the Ringmaster and make your case. In other words, I can be persuaded by reason.
  9. These guidelines are subject to the Ringmaster's discretion and may apply on a case-by-case basis. These guidelines are also subject to change at any given time.

Another thing to be aware of is that the Inner Circle is run with the cooperation of WebRing, at http://www.webring.org. This is a free service. As it is free, however, that means if problems arise, we should be lenient.

For more assitance and answers, contact the Ringmaster at groo215@winterchill.com.

Once again, thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
Jim Walters
The Transformers Inner Circle Webring Ringmaster,