OurChurch.Com showcases its website services by featuring real websites created and maintained by OCC webmasters. Five websites will be featured as "sample sites" each month, one in each of the following categories: a Free package, a Plus package, a Domain package, a Gold, Silver or Bronze package, and one site with the ad-free option.

Why would you want your site featured as a sample site? Two words: free publicity. OCC's sample site receive about 4,000 hits a month. You can nominate a site (yours or someone else's) by entering your OCC ID# and clicking the "Nominate" button below.

Please note, this is not a contest. There are no rules. We will follow this process each month, though. On the last day of each month we will review sample sites for each category in the order they were nominated. Sample sites will be selected from those nominated by OurChurch.Com at our discretion. Once a site has been reviewed, whether it's selected or not it will not be considered again in the future. When we have selected the sample site for a particular category for the next month, we will stop reviewing sites in that category and will pick up with the next nomination the following month. That means if your site is nominated and 12 really good sites in the same category have already been nominated, it's possible your site won't even be considered until a year from now.

While we will notify you if you are selected as a sample site for a month, we will not notify you if your site has not been selected. We will not reply to emails asking if your site has been considered or asking how you can improve your chances of being selected. We do, however, want to give you some idea of what we are looking for so we can have the best sample sites possible, so here are some tips.

Important keys to being selected:

• Sample sites are intended to showcase OCC's features. The more types of pages used in a site, the better.
• An up-to-date calendar page is a plus.
• A nice photos page is plus.
• A good-looking site with graphics and colors that match is more likely to be considered.
• If you have a Gold, Silver, or Bronze site, then having message boards, chat rooms, and audio on your site is very important.
• Since there are many fewer sites that have the ad-free option than do not, your chances of being selected are much higher if you have the ad-free option.
• The size, reputation, and influence of the organization the website serves has no influence in the selection process. A good website for a family of five will be selected, while a poor website for a church of 5,000 will be passed over.

• OCC will only consider each site once. If you nominate your site before it is really ready, it could be passed over and not considered again in the future.
• Avoid putting a lot of HTML, banner exchanges, and awards on your homepage. They are fine on a links page or an awards page, but they clutter a homepage.
• Long titles in the navigation menu are a negative.
• Photos that are so big they go off the edge of the screen are a negative.
• Using the "Edit Graphics and Colors" option on your webmaster page and selecting bullet, bar, background, and button graphics from different themes that don't look good together can hinder a site.
• Really long pages are a negative.
• Spelling and grammatical errors are a negative.
• Blank pages are a negative.