And all you have to do is use their free web­page edi­tor, which rocks any­ways. All pages made with syn­th­a­site are eli­gi­ble for the com­pe­ti­tion, the results will be pre­sented to the pub­lic on Jan­u­ary 5th next year. But there’s actu­ally a lot more than just plain old money at stake: espe­cially pro-bloggers dig all kinds of buzz for their persona/projects, so this sounds like a nice deal:

The names of the win­ner will be announced on Jan­u­ary 5th 2009, the com­pe­ti­tion began today. In case you haven’t tried Syn­th­a­site yet this is a good oppor­tu­nity to take a closer look at an inter­est­ing online ser­vice: while many providers spe­cial­ized in free blog host­ing, Syn­th­a­site chose a dif­fer­ent approach. After the (free) reg­is­tra­tion the user can build his or her own page in a pretty advanced online edi­tor. This tool not only allows for cus­tom struc­ture but also inter­ac­tive ele­ments like a shop, a video gallery, var­i­ous forms and wid­gets. Design and fea­tures are widely cus­tomiz­able. When pub­lish­ing a page, the owner can either stick with a Syn­th­a­site sub­do­main, buy a ded­i­cated domain for $15 per year or down­load the whole page to host it elsewhere.

Synthasite’s edi­tor screen

Besides the great usabil­ity, there’s one fea­ture that really makes syn­th­a­site stand out: there are no third party ads. That means a web­mas­ter can chose to use ads for his project, but Syn­th­a­site never inter­feres with ban­ners, pop-ups and the like. I’m not sure how these guys pay their bills by the end of the month, but obvi­ously the ser­vice is mak­ing enough money to start the con­test. So if you’ve been look­ing for a quick and sim­ple way to build a non-standard home­page from scratch, Syn­th­a­site might per­fectly suit your needs any­ways. And if you’re plan­ning to enter the con­test, you should keep the cri­te­ria in mind:

All entries will be judged by a panel of experts based on the fol­low­ing equally weighted judg­ing cri­te­ria: visual appeal of site, focused pur­pose, and/or inno­v­a­tive use of widgets.

Good luck! Even though I’m gen­er­ally not a big fan of third party infra­struc­ture (you never know what might change), I must admit that this is a pretty nice idea — I’m curi­ous about the win­ners, since I’m a mediocre designer at best, I’ll skip this one.