Beermad's linking policy

Beermad receives many requests for links from this site, so in order to save your time and mine, please read these guidelines before asking me to link to your site. It is my aim to provide a collection of links which lovers of real ale will find relevant as well as interesting. I will not link to sites which I don't personally consider fit in with the ethos of my site.

What almost certainly will be linked from Beermad:

Brewers of traditional beer anywhere in Europe. Brewers who do not brew traditional cask or bottle conditioned may be included if I think their site includes material which could be of interest to real ale lovers.
Pubs, hotels, shops, mail-order companies etc. which sell traditional cask or bottle conditioned beers. The site must clearly show that the establishment is an outlet for traditional beers; sites where only passing reference to traditional beer is made will not be included. However, this rule may be relaxed if there's good reason to think that they have a good reputation for real ale (for example having been awarded a local CAMRA branch Pub of the Year accolade.)
Sites with information about brewery and pub equipment, where that equipment is relevant to traditional beer.
Sites about to tourism related to traditional beer, such as brewery tours.
Sites related to or run by beer consumer organisations, anywhere in Europe, such as CAMRA, the Real Ale Tasting Society, Zythos, etc.
Sites about beer festivals, commercial or non-commercial, where the festival is run to promote traditional beer.
Personal sites run by lovers of traditional beer, as long as they're not just "what I did on my holidays" type sites.
Sites related to magazines or other publications of interest to traditional beer lovers.
Local pub guides providing they have relevant information about the beers sold in the pubs (which is what people visit Beermad to find) and also that they have real content. That's to say, there is actually some real content - not just addresses, 'phone numbers, etc. that can be gleaned from other public sources. If you claim to be reviewing pubs you actually need to have reviewed them, not just listed them.

What almost certainly will not be linked from Beermad:

Pub guides that are just skeletons waiting for visitors to fill in the details. I have lost count of the number of such sites that have been submitted to me, usually just populated with lists of pubs that are available from public sources but no other information about the pubs. If you're expecting your visitors to do your work for you, your site won't be of interest to Beermad visitors unless you already have people who have reviewed most of the pubs so there's useful content.
Sites designed to only work in Internet Explorer. There are published standards for Web sites which Microsoft has deliberately corrupted in order to abuse its near-monopoly. To link to such a site would be to collaborate in Bill Gates' desire to own the Internet.
Sites which have no relevance to traditional beer or interest to its lovers.
Sites outside Europe, unless they have a lot of content which is relevant to Europe. It's not that I have anything against the world outside Europe (apart from the United Terrorist States of America, of course) but covering the rest of the world would mean HUGE numbers of links.
Sites about pubs, hotels, etc. where there is no real feature made of traditional beers. For example, if all your site says about its beers is something like "We sell real ale" it won't be linked here.
Sites in any way inimical to traditional beer, unless their inclusion might have interest to real ale lovers.
Sites which inflict pop-ups on their visitors.
Sites pushing a political viewpoint, unless it happens to be a viewpoint designed to benefit real ale.

What will never be linked from Beermad:

Sites rendered wholly or predominantly in Flash, unless there is a way to bypass it to navigate the site. Since these two technologies have terrible security holes in them and also don't work properly in all browsers. To make things worse, Macromedia can't even be bothered making a Flash plugin for 64 bit computers, so even if I wanted to look at Flash sites, I couldn't.
Sites that can only be viewed if cookies are allowed. I'm not going to let sites I visit track what I'm doing and I don't expect Beermad visitors to either. Cookies can be useful when used sensibly, but no website should demand that its visitors allow them.
Sites containing racist, sexist, homophobic or overt religious material (although an exception will be made for the latter in the case of Trappist breweries.)
Sites run by, or on behalf of, any company, organisation or person known to be, or to have been, responsible for Spam or those who, in my experience, are too careless to prevent repeated virus transmissions from their computers.
Sites which require cookies, except where they're needed for legitimate purposes such as shopping or helping visitors navigate. Beermad doesn't invade its visitors' privacy and doesn't like websites that do.
http://welcome.to/ sites will not be linked under any circumstances, as that domain always spits out pop-up windows that crash my browser. Sorry if this means your site is excluded, but I won't link to anything that causes that kind of problem.

Please note however that I reserve the right to completely ignore any of the above guidelines to either include sites that I personally like or exclude those I dislike.