Details on the "Business Blog" Prize Category

Overall Goals

These are not required items for the pattern contest. They are the overall design goals, intended to guide you towards creating the best pattern.

See the end of this page for helpful tips on winning the 60 GB iPod and $50 iTunes gift certificate (the top prize in this contest).

• friendly to new admins: keep template and resource names obvious, include the wysywig editor whenever possible, don't assume any web-site-management experience
• business-friendly but not business-boring
• flexible page designs that accommodate additions like flickr photo streams, blogrolls, and other "list-based" renderings in the margins
• standards-compliant when possible, but don't be anal about it
• home page is a Weblog II page
• friendly to optically-challenged users. Users with poor eyesight should have no problem telling links from regular text. Use underlines and colors to keep them clearly identified. Float-effects are fine, but links (especially links in the main text) should be clearly identified before the user points at the link.
• Base discussion area on a fullThread page, but include clean designs for traditional message viewing and editing.
• topics page similar to what is found on the support site
• [optional] "Catalog view" - a way to display short product descriptions, small photos, and links to more info and purchase points
• [optional] Alternative (but related) full-page and Bound URL templates for specific pages and sub-directories of the site.

How to Win!

The winner of the top prize will be the pattern which best meets the above requirements, with an emphasis on:

• overall creativity and flexibility
• appeal and applicability to professional and business users (weblog on home page, easy and flexible display of complementary content)
• user-friendly behavior
• standards support and cross-browser compatibility
• We could include links to some of your pages as references for some of the points in those lists, if you like, but emphasize that we're not looking for clones and the approach that was used may not be the best.