How a site earns the wall

What this place is

Earn the Wall is a hall of fame for websites. Not a feed, not a leaderboard, not a scraper's index — a wall, with a fixed bar for getting on it. Every inductee was nominated by a person, reviewed live by a person, and voted in. Each one stands with a citation: a short written case for why it deserves the spot, specific enough that you could learn from it.

The vote, step by step

1. Tryouts. Anyone can enter any site at /tryouts — your own work or someone else's you think belongs up here. Entering is free.
2. Film review. A reviewer opens the site itself and uses it — on a desktop, on a phone — scoring craft, clarity, character and condition. Screenshots inform the plaque; they never decide the vote.
3. The verdict. Yes or no, sent to the email on the entry. A no comes with the reasons, and a site that retools can try out again.
4. Enshrinement. A yes gets a plaque page, an induction number, a written citation, and a spot in its league on the wall.

The express tryout

The walk-on queue is free and moves in order. The express tryout costs $10 and guarantees a verdict inside 24 hours. The fee buys speed and nothing else — the bar does not move, the vote is the same vote, and if the answer is no, the $10 is refunded in full. Payments run through our payment processor; card details never touch our systems.

What we publish, and what we keep

An inductee's page shows the site's public address, screenshots we took of its public pages, the palette we read off those screenshots, and the citation we wrote. That's the whole exhibit.

From tryouts we keep the entry itself — address, contact email, any notes and screenshot sent with it — on our infrastructure, and we use the email only to deliver the verdict. Verdict and receipt emails go out through our email delivery provider, acting as our data processor. The site is hosted on Cloudflare. No analytics scripts, no ad pixels, no selling of anything to anyone.

Coming down off the wall

Induction is earned, and it can be un-earned: a site that dies, fills with ads, or sheds the design that won the vote gets its banner retired. Own a site on the wall and want it gone anyway? Email the house and it comes down, no argument — fasttrack@earnthewall.com.

The fine print on screenshots

Screenshots are of public pages, shown to identify and celebrate the work — the web equivalent of a museum photographing its own exhibit. Every image links back to the site it shows, and copyright in the pictured work stays with its owner. Object to an image of your site? Same address as above; it comes down.