In an effort to promote and recognize Visual Basic sites that provide essential information and assistance to the novice VB programmer, Visual Basic Explorer is proud to announce the "Beginner Friendly Site Award"; all sites that recieve this award have met or exceeded the requirements listed below and are highly recommended. You can also check out some of the awards we've won.

All sites must contain at least two original beginner level tutorials or articles. For our purposes sites that have large amounts of well commented source examples or downloads w/source (in essence mini-tutorials) will be considered to have met their tutorial requirements. The subject matter can be anything related to Visual Basic programming including, but not limited to, GUI design, naming conventions, using various controls, databases, DirectX, ActiveX; in short anything that teaches essential VB programming skills or concepts. The sites must also contain at least two of the following categories;

• Source code examples.(3 or More)
• Code snippets. (3 or More)
• Tips & Tricks. (3 or More)
• Downloads w/source. (4 or More Suited to Beginner)
• FAQ section. (4 or More Answered Questions)
• Message board or another forum for beginner's to ask questions.(1)

I must be able to access the site to insure that all requirements are met. I reserve the right to make the final decision as to whether or not a site adequately meets the requirements. While commercial sites are also eligible the tutorials and code presented must not depend solely on specific commercial software. No sites that contain vulgar or inappropriate material will be considered.

Realizing that there are so many novel sites being built every day and that I may miss some essential new teaching resource, I may modify the award requirements over time to include other high quality beginner resources that aren't obvious at this time.

There are many excellent VB sites on the net that specialize in every imaginable area of Visual Basic and this award in no way means that these sites are 'inferior'. In fact I encourage you to explore them; many of them specialize in dealing with more advanced issues or provide useful tools, controls and software. The sites we select for this special award are those that have gone the extra mile in helping out the novice programmer by providing free information that specifically meets their needs. If you'd like to make your site more 'beginner friendly' checkout our winners page. If you know of any sites that meet these requirements and aren't listed you can contact me via e-mail and I'll do my best to evaluate them within 7-14 days.