The month of August holds a lot of special significance to me. My birthday is in August (is, in fact, this Wednesday). I work for a great company that features the word “August” in its masthead. The month itself was named after Caesar Augustus, arguably a cool cat in an old-school sort of way. And the word “august” as an adjective means something majestic or awe-inspiring. Neat, huh?
So to celebrate all that is August and Awesome, I’ve decided to hold the first-ever CSSnewbie Contest! The winner will receive:
- A review of your website on CSSnewbie. If you’re new to web development, I can offer suggestions on how to improve/update the site. If you’re already an established web guru, I can promote the splendor that is your site and hopefully send a bit of traffic your way. If you don’t want to promote your site, I’d also be willing to do a private review for your eyes only.
- Eric Meyer’s book, CSS Pocket Reference: Visual Presentation for the Web. This handy-dandy 168-page book is chock full of great CSS information presented in cheat sheet format.
How It Works:
You subscribe to the CSSnewbie RSS feed using either the links in the sidebar or at the bottom of this (and every) post. If you’re already a subscriber, congratulations! You don’t have to do anything else except remain the subscriber you are.
Watch for a pass-phrase to appear at the bottom of an article in the RSS feed. Remember that “hiding content in your RSS feed” article last week? Here’s where that comes into play. The pass-phrase won’t be present in every article, but it’ll be there often enough that you’ll be able to find it if you’re looking for it.
Once you’ve found the pass-phrase, shoot an email to [email protected]. The subject line should be the pass-phrase and nothing else. The body of the message should contain a link to the website you’d like to have reviewed/promoted, and can also contain any other comments you’d like to include. Email me before the contest ends at the end of the day (11:59PM Central Time) on August 31, 2008.
On September 1, 2008 (or thereabouts — I reserve the right to extend the contest by a week or so if it looks like a lot of people are pouring in at the last minute) I’ll randomly (programmatically) select a winner from the list of emails. They will be notified by email, and an announcement will go up on the site. If the winner doesn’t respond within a week of the announcement, I’ll pick a new winner. And so on.
This proposition is really win-win for all involved, I think. If you subscribe to CSSnewbie, I’ll obviously benefit from the additional readership. And if you win, you’ll benefit from that same influx by boosting the number of people who will see your website (and you’ll get a great CSS book to boot!). And hopefully everyone else who subscribes will at least benefit from the articles that get posted here on CSSnewbie.
So click that subscribe button, spread the word about the contest, and let’s see if we can’t make August the best month ever!