A. Fantasy Fights Proud Member Banner

This is a requirement for participation in the Fantasy Fights, the banner must be linked back to Fantasy Fights at http://www.webcompetition.net. Please Note: Without this banner on your main page and linked you will be placed on hold until you have done so. You will not be able to compete until this banner is up. If at a later time you take these banners off you can and will be Disqualified for No Banners.

B. Voting Banners
This is a requirement for participation in the Fantasy Fights, the banner must be linked to your team's voting booth. Once you hear from your Team Captain, they will tell you where to find a Voting Banner and also which link to use for your voting banner. Be advised your voting URL may change once you advance to the Upper Levels. Many times your votes will come from random visitors to your page, so you want to be sure to keep your voting link up-to-date to not miss out on any votes.

C. Guest books
Another important requirement of the Fantasy Fights, your site should have at least one guestbook where people wishing to vote exchange with you can leave messages. It should also allow images so that our Sprites can leave you their colorful spirited well wishes and gifts. Many people will put a separate guestbook on their site that is meant strictly for those participating in web competitions so their regular guestbook doesn't get bogged down with messages and images. You can find free guest books through services such as

HTML Gear
Bravenet
Dreambook

to name a few. Many website providers also provide guest books for their members, but please make sure those will allow images.

D. Spirit pages
This is not a requirement, but speaking from experience a lot of voters are more likely to vote for a site with a spirit page than one without. This can be a place to put all those awards you will be winning from your time at the Fantasy Fights, along with graphics and gifts you may get from supporters. You can also use it to make a list of supporters with their links, put your own gifts for your supporters on, post your favorite scrolls -- the possibilities are endless! You can check out spirit pages on other fighter's sites to help you get started and to get an idea of how to set it out.

A. Where to get votes
So you have your page all ready to go; now, how do you start getting votes? Good places to start are vote exchange sites, which can be found at several of the webpage competitions. These are places that list sites who are presently competing. They are usually looking for supporters and would be willing to do a vote exchange with you. Also remember to visit sites competing within the Fantasy Fights and see if they would like to vote exchange as well, especially your teammates, this is a great way to start. Don't forget to let your family and friends know that you're competing too!
Note: The Fantasy Fights has it's very own Vote Exchange Wall, The Fantasy Fights Ultimate Vote Exchange -- check this link out to see what sites are willing to do a vote exchange and also place your own site on the Wall.

B. How to get people to vote for you
When you start looking for voters, be sure to do 2 things when visiting their sites;
1). Leave them a message in their guestbook and a few comments about their site. This lets them know you were there.
2). E-mail a request to them to vote for your site -- if the site you're visiting is also competing, offer to do a vote exchange with them. Basically what you're doing is letting them know you will vote for their site if they in turn vote for yours.
One very important thing to remember is NEVER blind vote. Blind voting means you're voting for someone without having ever seen their site. Not only is this inspirited, but it's also unfair. One reason people join web competitions is to bring more traffic to their site -- if you just send them an e-mail for a vote exchange without visiting their site, that's less traffic for them. And after all, you would want them to visit YOUR site, right?

C. Sending vote reminders
Once you start getting responses to your requests for vote exchanges, you may notice people requesting daily or weekly reminders. This indicates how often they would like a vote reminder sent; if they want daily reminders, that means they would like a reminder every day; if they want weekly reminders, that means they only want reminders sent once a week. Some people will use mailing list services such as Cool list or Yahoo Groups (previously E groups) to keep track of their reminders. When I competed I personally found it easier to just create groups in my address book, one group for weekly reminders and one group for daily reminders, and then just add addresses to the proper group. However you decide to do it, make sure you respect all requests -- there's nothing more annoying than getting daily reminders when you've requested weekly. During fighting you may have voters request to be switched from one list to the other (i.e. from daily to weekly) or to be removed from the mailing list altogether, so always take the time to read your reminders.
1). Things to include in your reminders
When you send reminders remember to include your name, your site name, site URL, and current voting URL at the very least; you can also include an update on how your site is doing, your spirit page URL, a little quote or saying, a graphic for your supporters; whatever you feel you need to include.
2). Things NOT to include in your reminders
Don't EVER start accusing your supporters of not voting for you in your reminders -- this is a good way to lose supporters! Scores go up and down all the time as people gain and lose supporters; you have no way of proving that "so-and-so" isn't voting for you, and you may lose potential voters in the process, REMEMBER by accusing your supporters of not voting you are also accusing those who are voting. Also be careful of spamming; what you may consider as doing a friend a favor may actually be considered spamming by some, which is a violation of the rules and cause for disqualification. If you're unsure about posting information on behalf of other fighters, the best thing you can do is don't post it.

D. Voting for other sites
When voting for other sites, whether it's in the Fantasy Fights or any other competition, 2 things usually hold true; you must put a valid e-mail address in, and you can only vote the once per day per site. You can vote for the same site everyday (and in fact that's encouraged) and you can vote for as many sites in the same ring as you want to, providing you only vote once per site and remember to just use the 1 email address to represent yourself, if you use more than 1 email address it can be associated with Ballot Stuffing (please read the next point). Remember you're allowed to also vote for your own site, so make sure you do -- that one vote could make a world of difference!

E. Helpful hint for Voting for your Supporters
If you are supporting a fighter who has more than 1 site in competition here, you are not obligated to vote for all their sites. The same goes with having supporters who have their sites in more than 1 competition, you will find that many will ask you to vote for either 1 of their sites, or just to place 1 vote for their site, if however you are asked to vote for all their sites and in all their competitions, you are definitely not obliged to and we do not condone this either. When I was a fighter, I certainly didn't like being asked to vote more than once, especially if I only had the 1 site in competition and I had a lot of supporters. A suggestion would be to vote on alternate days. Your supporters would appreciate you more if you asked if they could vote for your sites on alternate days rather than asking if "hey while you're there can you vote for this one too". Remember being courteous and understanding will work wonders.

F. Ballot Stuffing & Cheating
Ballot Stuffing and Cheating are associated when a fighter has more than 1 email address and will use all of them to gain votes for their site. Now this is classified as cheating and is instant cause for disqualification. Some instances I have come across fighters that will use email addresses from their Address Books and places vote using those email addresses to gain extra votes, this is DEFINITELY not allowed and again will mean instant disqualification! Please also inform your friends and family if they are going to vote for you that they also only use 1 email address. Remember you are welcome to vote for yourself as I mentioned earlier on, but you are only to vote the once each day using the 1 email address. Please remember this.

A. Competing within your team
The Fantasy Fights has several teams to choose from. Once you have chosen a team, you will have 3 levels within your team to advance through before reaching the Semi-Finals within the Fantasy Fights. The first level you will be competing in is the qualifying round, now all votes in the Qualifying round are all shown by Qualifying Images and Non Qualifying Images. To reach the second level of your team, you must have received 3 qualifying images for the week, anything lower means you need to find more supporters to vote for you. The Qualifying Round is the round that determines if you have enough voters to move into the competition round. Once you get through the qualifying round, you move onto the secondary, or competition round. Here you can see the actual number of votes you've received, with the highest number being first place. Once you get through this round, you advance to the team's final level, which is one step below the semi-finals for the Fights, which is also scored on actual votes received. Once you would get through the rounds within your team, the next step is the semi-finals.

B. Competing outside of your team within the Semi-Finals
When you win your team finals, you will advance to either the Enchanted Forest, Enchanted Mountains, or Enchanted Valleys, depending on what team you're on. This is where you begin competing with other team's fighters in the Fantasy Fights, so the competition is going to get a little tougher. Once you win the Enchanted round, the next and final step is Inspiring Heights, the finals of the Fantasy Fights. This is where the competition is the toughest as the best sites of the Fights compete in this round. To be crowned the Heights champion you have to win it for 3 weeks in a row -- if you can accomplish this you get the chance to compete in the Tournament Of Dreams to be held at a later date. If you don't get through the Heights, you drop back down to the middle round of your team for the chance to try again.
Please note that all votes within the Enchanted Levels and the Inspiring Heights are all counted by IP# and not by email address. This means that only 1 vote is allowed per computer, so you will have to remember to tell your family and friends that they can only vote the once from their computer.

C. Posting Cheers for your Team (Fantasy Scrolls)
The Fantasy Fights Scrolls is a place where fighters can cheer their teams onto victory, and is just as much a part of competing as voting! You can post up to a total of 5 cheers a day making it a total of 25 cheers at the end of the week. You can win awards from your team even if you cheer 1 time out of the week. Your team will have a cheer awards page so you can go and pick an award up. If you post 25 cheers at the end of the week (5 cheers each day) you can win a personalized award, courtesy of your team captain! Remember showing the spirit is half the fun of competing and for each team gaining the most cheers at the end of the month will receive a Special Spirited Cheer Award from me!