And you didn't have a backup of your site.

I have even read report about one user who had over a gigabyte on his website of years of hard work with no backup of his own. His host decided he was getting too much traffic and simply deleted his site. The poor guy and to send a note to everyone on his email list begging people to check their browser cache's to see if they could send him graphics and pages ... it took six months but he rebuilt his site (and now he has a backup).

The moral of story ... backup your web site. I don't care whether you've got it on Homestead, AOL or Addr.com, if you don't make your own backup you are taking chance that you could loose all of your work ... forever.

How do you back up your site? What I do is make sure that I edit my site on my OWN hard drive, then upload it as I make changes. That way I always have my own copy (and, of course, I make a backup of that also). If you don't or can't do that, then just use FTP to copy files to your own hard drive once in a while.

If you have no other choice, you can use "Save As..." functions to save graphics and HTML pages. Note that if you do this you will capture your sites banners also so this is not preferred method.

So backup your site. You will be glad that you did.

What's next? Read criteria. Understand criteria. Compare your site against criteria.

This is critical step that many people miss. You see, most people who submit their sites for awards want to do it fast and furious. They burrow through a site - straight for awards submission page, enter data and let fly. Within a few seconds they move on to next award.

That's wrong way to do it. No, read criteria and look at your site with a critical eye. Let's say criteria says, "good HTML code" and your site was created with Frontpage or GeoCities site editor. Your chances of winning are highly reduced, because neither of these produces particularly good code.

Sometimes it will be pretty obvious that you should not submit your site. The criteria says site has to be made by a woman, and you are a man, for instance. Or awardmaster wants science fiction sites and your's is about how to make money from internet. Don't waste everyone's time - please read criteria.

Sometimes it's a bit more difficult. Let say criteria says, "text must be easy to read." Well, step back and take a look at your site. Is text light pink on a dark pink background? It's not easy to read. Or perhaps criteria says, "usable navigation on every page." Does your site have usable navigation? Maybe criteria says, "You must provide an obvious way to turn off any music." Well, do you?

Other criteria might include: no bandwidth stealing - check your images to be sure they are locally stored. No copyright violations - make sure you haven't "borrowed anything" from anyone. Fast loading - check your site on a 28.8 modem to see for yourself.

Correct anything that you feel like fixing, making a best guess as to awardmasters intention. Once you feel your site is up-to-snuff, then go ahead and submit it.

You see what happens if you approach award programs from proper direction? Your site gets better. You are taking "advice" of dozens or even hundreds of webmasters and determining if you agree or disagree. If you agree (you want to submit your site to award), then you make change. If not, you move on.

An in reality, that's what awards programs are all about. They are a way to improve websites and make internet a better place for us all.