Q. Top
Sites Outdoor Network privacy policy
A. Top Sites Outdoor Network
respects your privacy and the privacy of those visiting your web site.
Any IP information gathered is used soley for the purpose of tracking unique
hits. The email or personal information of visitors to your website or
our website is not collected. All IP addresses gathered are kept in a secure
file and are purged each day at midnight. Members email addresses are never
sold or distributed and are used solely for the purpose of Top Sites communicating
necessary information to its members.
Q. How
do I put a mini-banner on my page?
A. After registering your
website under a certain category, you will be shown some html code and
you will be mailed the same code. You then need to highlight the code with
your mouse cursor, then click the button labeled 'edit' on your browser/e-mail,
then click the word 'copy.' You then need to paste the code within your
home page's html source code.
Q. I'm
having a problem installing the banner code.
A. The easiest way to install
the banner code is to open your webpage in a text editor like notepad or
wordpad, choose the location where you want the banner to appear, and paste
the code into your webpage. If you are using a GUI editor like Frontpage,
Hotmetal, Adobe, AOLPress, or Homestead and are having problems click
here.
Q. I joined
under the wrong category. How do I change it?
A. Go to the board where
you're currently listed. Click on 'Members - Click Here to Login.' After
logging in, you will see your account screen. Go to the bottom where it
says, 'To be removed from this Top Sites list Click Here,' and click on
the link. A removal email should pop up on your screen. Send it. Afterwards,
you will receive an email stating you have been removed. Now you will be
able to rejoin on another category.
Q. How
are the sites ranked?
A. Sites on any particular
board are ranked according to their average unique hits. Their average
is based on each site's previous 4 days of unique hits, not including the
current day.
Q. What's
a unique hit?
A. A unique hit is a single
visit to a particular web page by one internet surfer with a non-duplicated
IP address within one given day. The difference between a regular hit and
a unique hit is an internet surfer can visit the same page 50 times in
one day and register 50 regular hits but since it's the same person, only
one unique hit for that person, for that given day, is registered. If that
same person visits the next day, he or she will add another single unique
hit to your count. Counting uniques hits rather than regular hits prevents
web site owners from continuously visiting their own page within the same
day thereby moving themselves up in the rankings.
However, if an internet surfer disconnects/reconnects
with their service provider and consequently attains a new IP address (DHCP),
that surfer will be probably register another unique hit if they revisit
your site. This is out of our control. If a website owner, with a LOT of
time on their hands, decided to use this method to falsely increase their
number of uniques, they would have to do it everyday for eternity since
we only look at the last five days of uniques. Good luck.
Q. My unique
hit counter doesn't match up with your counter. Mine shows way more hits.
Why?
A. First, the mini-banner
must appear to the visitor of your page for a hit to register. If the banner
doesn't appear, no hit. Second, every member's website is designed differently.
Because of this, the mini-banner may or may not register every unique visitor.
For example, a highly efficient, text mostly, website will load much faster
and display the mini-banner more often than a site heavily laden with graphics.
A website who displays the mini-banner on all of its pages will likely
register more unique visitors than a site displaying the mini-banner only
on it's front page. Why? Because many visitors to your website may not
enter through your front page. Such visitors may bookmark your message
board, bypassing your front page and the mini-banner. Since your 'server
based' hit counter counts all hits on all pages, it probably wont match
ours. We do not claim to be 100% accurate. There are too many variables.
Our service should not be used as your only way to count visitors to your
website. Our service is a light hearted competition between websites to
give everyone a 'general' idea of which sites get more unique hits than
others.
Q. I think
some websites are cheating by masking IP addresses. I also think some services,
like AOL, replace IP addresses everytime one of its members requests a
page. What are you going to do about it?
A. Now, let's talk about
IP address manipulation and cheating. Say an outfit like AOL assigned a
new IP address for each request a member makes. Or worse yet, a webmaster
figured out how to mask IP addresses and replace non-unique hits with self
generated IP addresses (i.e. cheating). If cheating is discovered, that
member will first be asked to correct the situation, and will then be removed
from our boards permanently, if not corrected. As far as AOL and other
possible IP manipulating services, there is little we can do about that.
A unique visitor is determined by their unique IP address, case closed.
In this situation, the playing field is even for everyone. We give no website
preference. Even our advertisors fend for themselves. If in the future,
a better way to track uniques is discovered, we will probably switch to
that technique. In the meantime, this is the best tracking information
available to us.
Q. What's
a banner click?
A. A banner click is registered
for a particular site when the '100 Top Sites!' mini banner on that site
is clicked. We measure banner clicks to see how much traffic is being sent
to our site from any particular website. The 5 sites with the highest banner
clicks will share (by random rotation) the special text banner space (top
site banner pick) between the 10th and 11th ranked site on that given board.
Banner clicks also improve your ranking when someone is conducting a search.
Q. Are
the banner clicks ever reset?
A. The board's banner clicks
are reset to 0 at the start of each month. We do this so a listed web site
doesn't accumulate hundreds of banner clicks over a long period and is
always selected as as one of the five 'top site banner picks.'
Q. How
does the search engine work?
A. The search engine allows
visitors to find specific member websites by using keywords. You can enter
as many keywords as you like separating each word by a space. If you then
choose the AND function, only member sites which include all the words
will be displayed. If you choose the OR function, member sites which contain
any of the words will be displayed. You can then search all 10 of the Outdoor
Network boards or just the board you are currently searching from. The
search engine is case insensitive.
Q. How
can I improve my ranking on the search engine?
A. Search engine ranking
is based on the number of Banner Clicks each member has. The more banner
clicks, the higher a member is ranked on a given search. In order to improve
your ranking, make sure you place your mini-banner on your website where
it will be clicked often to increase your number of banner hits.
Q. Which
Time Zone do the boards run on?
A. Since the Top Sites boards
list websites from around the world, we chose GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).
What this means is when it's midnight, GMT, the boards will roll over to
the next day. This is six hours earlier than midnight, CST, which is around
6PM CST.
Q. How
can I increase my ranking on a particular board?
A. Often times visitors to
your site will not wait for every graphic to be displayed before moving
to the next page. Therefore, we recommend placing the banner near the top
of your page to increase the likelyhood of it being activated. This will
significantly increase your ranking within your category since we use this
banner to count the number of unique hits to your website. Without placing
the banner on your website, or the banner being placed on the bottom of
your page and never being displayed (particularly slow loading, graphic
heavy websites), you will have 0 average uniques, the equivelent of a non-existent
website.
Q. Can
I paste the mini-banner code on more than one page?
A. Yes, we encourage it,
as long as the pages are all part of the same website. We define a website
as a logical collection of web pages clearly portrayed as one unit. This
means if your website has a page (e.g. a message board) which resides on
another domain, but is clearly part of the registered website, then you
are allowed to display the mini-banner on this page. Since many of your
unique visitors may visit your website through other pages on your site
and we see no reason to penalize you for the erratic behavior of internet
surfers.
Q. My ranking
is improving on the Top Site Board but the banner on my page shows yesterday's
ranking or doesn't show any ranking. Why?
A. Sometimes an old banner
image gets stuck in your browser's cache on your hard drive. This happens
occasionally. If you are using Microsoft Explorer, hold the Ctrl key (lower
left on your keyboard) as you load/refresh your home page. If this doesn't
work, try the following: To see the updated banner on your page, if you're
using Microsoft Explorer, click on 'Tools' > 'Internet Options' then make
sure the 'General' tab is selected (default). Click on the button 'Delete
Files.' This will clear your browser's cache. Then reload your page and
you will see the updated banner. If you're using Netscape, click 'Edit'
> 'Preferences' > 'Advanced' > 'Cache' then click on 'Clear Memory Cache'
and 'Clear Disk Cache.' Then reload your page.
Q. Why
doesn't Top Sites force the banners to refresh everytime, sometime refered
to as 'cache busting'?
A. The majority of visitors
to your website have their browsers set to refresh images everyday or so.
We feel refreshing the mini-banner everyday or every other day is sufficient
since most sites listed don't move dramatically day to day. To refresh
the mini-banners every time they're displayed (we've tried this) can drive
our processor usage up over 300 percent, bogging down our server, and also
adds much unneeded traffic on the internet.
Q. What's
a mini-tag and how can I get one?
A. A mini-tag is a small
tag placed next to your Top Sites listing. The mini-tag is 32 pixels high
and 32 pixels wide. To place a free mini-tag next to your listing, select
one from the mini-tag table when you join, or select one later from your
account screen.
Q. How
do I get a custom mini-tag next to my listing?
A. Log into your account.
Below the mini-tag table is a custom mini-tag link. Click it for the custom
tag form. It costs only $8 for 6 months or $14 for 1 year.
-
Your design must be either bitmap (bmp),
gif, or jpg format, and be 32 pixels wide by 32 pixels high or smaller.
-
No animation.
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Transparent color allowed.
-
The design you send us will be your
unique image and can't be used by anyone else.
-
Design must be in good taste.
Businesses advertising on Top Sites,
for 6 months or more, receive the above services for free, for the duration
of that ad. If you're not artistic, you can send us an image idea and we
can design it for an additional one time fee of $24. When payment is made,
we'll add the new tag to your login screen. For ease of payment, we encourage
using our PayPal system. If you choose to pay by check, we'll email you
an address and check information. You can redesign your logo at anytime.
Just email it to us with your account name.
Q. Why
should I register my site with 'your' Top 100 site?
A. Yes, there are other Top
100 services but ours is specifically outdoor related websites. We also
break our site down into more specific categories so, for example, catfishing
sites aren't competing with mega bait and tackle sites. We also provide
free unique hit tracking services so you can see how many visiters are
coming to you site. Unlike the other services, our '100 Top Sites!' downloads
quickly and isn't swamped with irrelevant banner ads and annoying pop-up
windows. And finally, we program the site and we are avid fisherman and
gun ownership advocates. We listen to all suggestions and will implement
any that make sense.
Q. How
do I modify my listing on the Top 100 Site?
A. It's easy. Just go to
the Top 100 Site where your site is listed and click on the 'account login'
link. YOU MUST LOGIN FROM THE BOARD YOU ARE LISTED ON. In other word, if
you're listed on the Walleye board, don't try to login to your account
from the hunting board. It wont work. After you're logged in, you can modify
all the vital information of your site including your password.
Q. What
if I forget my password?
A. Go to the Top 100 Site
where your site is listed and click on the 'account login' link. On the
login screen click on the 'forgot password' link where you will be prompted
to enter your e-mail. We'll then e-mail you your login and password.
Q. What
if I need a copy of the banner code to add to my page?
A. If for some reason you
lose the banner code needed to be added on your page just go to the Top
100 Site where your site is listed and click on the 'account login' link.
After logging in you will see the necessary code at the bottom of the screen.
Highlight this code and copy it to your web page.
Q. What
will cause my site to be taken off the lists?
-
Putting a site under the wrong category
-
Putting a non-outdoor related site on
the list
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Failing to put the mini-banner on your
page after 10 days
-
Modifying or hiding the mini-banner
so it can't be seen.
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Putting the mini-banner on sites other
than that registered.
-
Persistant use of other companies' slogans
or copywrited material. Judged per discretion of Top 100 Webmaster.
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Putting the mini-banner on any emails.
The mini-banner should only be placed on actual internet webpages.
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Any obvious cheating we haven't thought
of yet.
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Q. Who
has the power to change or delete my listing?
A. The only people who can
change or delete the information in your listing are you (the site owner)
and the Top 100 Webmaster if necessary. We reserve this right due to the
public nature of the Top 100 boards and our responsibilty to maintain the
integrity of the information presented.
Q. How
often are the boards statistics updated?
A. The main board's banner
clicks and stats bar charts and are updated instantly. The sites overall
rankings are updated once an hour to prevent the order of sites from continuously
changing.
Q. How
do I remove my listing from the board?
A. Click on the 'login to
account' link on the board where you are listed, then login. From there
click on the link 'click here to remove your listing' link and send the
email that is automatically generated.
Q. Does
Top Sites take suggestions?
A. We sure do. Many of the
features we have today are due to member's good ideas. Just e-mail the
idea to the address below.
Click
here to view the complete rules
Please e-mail all questions, suggestions,
or to report a problem to help@fishingnotebook.com |