Website competition [Archive]

Koko Ed

21-01-2003, 21:23

Originally posted by skrussel
Have all you students thought about which website you'll vote for as the best one?
Finally, FIRST has agreed to a website award.

At the risk of sounding like I'm kissing up, which I'm not, I don't see how any site other than THIS site, www.ChiefDelphi.com could possibly deserve the very first website award.

Which team website do you plan to vote for?
:yikes:

I think it will go to Chiefdelphi because this site has so much influence to what happens in FIRST. Nothing fancy. No flash or animated gifs. But what happens here is special.
Ironically Chiefdelphi will win becuase of the involvement of so many people from other teams and their loyal involment here.
How much more like FIRST can you get?

Joel J

21-01-2003, 21:57

Originally posted by skrussel
Have all you students thought about which website you'll vote for as the best one?
Finally, FIRST has agreed to a website award.

At the risk of sounding like I'm kissing up, which I'm not, I don't see how any site other than THIS site, www.ChiefDelphi.com could possibly deserve the very first website award.

Which team website do you plan to vote for?
:yikes: I too think that Chief Delphi's website will be a major contender for the website award; however, the award is given at the regional level, meaning the number of winners can equal the number of regionals we have this year. Chief Delphi may win for the regionals they attend, they should win for the regionals they attend, but it will not prevent other teams from winning.

DaBruteForceGuy

21-01-2003, 22:10

Chiefdelphi is definitly in the forerunning for this one...... I mean, for the first 4 months that i posted here, i didn't even realize that it is a single teams creation ... or site... or affiliate... or wtvr:D ya get the point

Gope

21-01-2003, 22:17

If anyone BUT chiefdelphi got this award it would be an outrage. I've visited every FIRST related website I can find and no team's website can hold a candle to the magic the CD guys pull off. Heck, CD's website is in alot of ways better than usfirst.org(mainly because navigation on CD is perfect).

Ephi

21-01-2003, 22:29

The rules for the award state that it does indeed have to be student built, run, and maintained.

I don't want to put anyone on the spot here but...

Is this site ENTIRELY student built, run, and maintained? Just curious, the look of the site and the amount of code contributed to it seems rather professional, not student built. If it is student built, well... wow :ahh:

Just curious.

AJ Quick

21-01-2003, 22:56

Is Brandon a 22 year old student?

Can someone point out where it says it needs to be made by a student?

Joel J

21-01-2003, 23:13

Originally posted by Ephi
The rules for the award state that it does indeed have to be student built, run, and maintained. The rules for the website award does not state this in any way, shape, or form. If it does, then there has been a major over site on my part. The only mention of "student" I see, in something even resembling this context, is: "The student 'judges' should have played some role in the development of their team’s website, and are responsible for reviewing all of the submitted team websites for each of the regional events in which his/her team is competing."

After posting this I was pointed to the first paragraph of the website award description. It reads: "The Website Design Award recognizes excellence in student-designed, built, and managed FIRST team websites. Eligible websites are judged/scored PRIOR to the competition by “student judges”. Student judges from each FIRST team determine the winner via ballot submitted on site at the regional competition from each FIRST team." One has to just love the vagueness of this description, however.. oh well, RAGE's website is definitely student built, so I am not too worried.

tonyargote

27-01-2003, 22:13

I think regardless of who made this site or not, they chief delphi definitley deserves an award. whether or not they should win the contest, that's up to judges and us, but the website itself is extremely complex (in a good way) and well built. i've been making websites for 4 years, and have made 3 big sites, so i know that something as big and cool as chief delphi's site is extremely hard to build.

POINT: Chief Delhpi's site rocks

activemx

28-01-2003, 17:45

well not quite, Chiefdelphi's main base is the vBulletin, a software built over php which is bascially designed for forum use. Which is the main purpose of Chifdelphi.com until this year chiefdelphi was mainly used as forums. Though in the past two years due to the demand Brandon has added new features. Certainly chiefdelphi is on the top though as on a regional level, FIRST woule look more then just forums on a team site. Stuff like history, past robots, team stats are good. Also i think the award is only given at certain regionals.

MattyCincinnati

28-01-2003, 18:07

We've run across a big question mark in this whole "student designed" issue. What if you use a program that helps you build websites? We all know angelfire can put you online in about 5 minutes with crappy gifs and some text, but if that's the extent of your skill, should you be penalized for your dependence on the software, or awarded for your involvement in the website competition. We assumed that using certain software that actually complies your page using templates would be cheating, ie phpBB and vBulletin. However, we only use the software for our forums pages, and those forums are for use by team members only, so we assumed that if we only linked to the forums, that it would be okay to include it in our submission. However, there will be sites that are made from modified tutorials and pieces of other sites, as well as sites that are built from the ground up from templates that Adobe supplies with it's software. I think even FrontPage uses templates. So the question remains: SOFTWARE? How much can we use without breaking rules? Gracious professionalism will find the internet a cold and heartless place, I know I do. There's no solid way to enforce a web rules doctrine, because for every person that makes a fool proof system, there are 5 people with a loophole. Perhaps the solution is this: The judges should be picked for a keen eye in honest, intuitive, and only student ORIGINAL pages. No one should be considered for the award if their page has been bought or built by checking boxes on a Wizard. This is our personal feeling, and anyone who has tried to actually conquer javascript or make a flash animation from scratch will agree.

Brandon Martus

28-01-2003, 18:31

I have to agree with what MattyCincinnati said. FIRST really needs to specify what is allowed and what isn't allowed, in regards to the website competition. I encourage some of you to post a few specific questions on the Jive forums, to clear up some of the ambiguity.

Thanks for all the positive comments about chiefdelphi.com. I'm pretty sure Chief Delphi will not be competing in the website competition as I do most of the website development and am not a student on the team, nor have I ever technically been a student on the team. We're very happy you think highly of the site, and are glad you continue to visit it daily (some of you hourly).

activemx is correct. vBulletin is used as a base for most things on this website. Its nice to have all of the session handling, template system, and user functionality already built, so we can focus on the unique functionality in new projects. The image gallery and white papers section actually were perl scripts written before we used vBulletin, which were then ported over to PHP to use with vBulletin. The Ventures system was written specifically to work with vBulletin, as was the 'Extra Discussion' area.

So, I'd go look around for other student-built websites to nominate for the website award. Two of my personal favorites would have to be http://www.feds201.com and http://www.rage173.org

Jack, from Team 201, has done some modifications to phpBB to create a Fantasy FIRST league. I believe focus has been shifted towards scouting now, with areas for each team to list their abilities and others to comment on them.

Joel J, from Team 173, has done a great job with this years website for their team. I personally like the image gallery, which is similar to ours, but has a great deal of little extras that make it enjoyable to view. (ie: the 'All' link, slide shows, etc) The overall design of their website looks very neat and professional.

If I had to vote, those two would be very high on my list. I can't remember offhand the team number or URL, but there was a canadian team's website that I liked too. And, I obviously cannot visit every FIRST website, or remember every FIRST website, so this is just my little opinion, based on very little team site browsing.

Anyway -- my point is .. If you are seriously going to be competing in the website competition I would read over the vauge rules and try to get some clarifications on what can and cannot be done by students and non-students, what is required on the website, how it is maintained, what is not allowed, etc.

/Brandon

Wow. I think this may be my longest post ... ever.

Duke 13370

28-01-2003, 19:09

I hate to point this out, (especially here) but I really don't think the team with the most features, or the best forums, or the coolest flash animations should always win this award. I think this award was designed for more than just that, and I think the one's that win this award should be the teams that use thier site, have a simple layout and design, and information about thier team and FIRST easily accessible(like on the main page).

I think this is somewhat like the animation award -- it should be an advertisement for FIRST and for thier team. Many of the sites have no information about FIRST or their team and yes, sure they're cool looking, but someone trying to find information will just leave because it's to hard to navigate

If you look around at the sites, there are quite a few that are just a forum and login screen (well, plus a little bit more:rolleyes: ). Of what use is that to another team, a possible sponsor, or anyone else seeking information -- very little. On the other hand, there are those other sites out there that have an information page, but the team never ues thier site site, that's just as bad. I think the sites should be somewhere in between, not just both halves of the site slapped together either, a site has to contain both, and integrate the two.

The other big thing is effort, I don't think a site that was rather obviously slapped together with forntpage and a forum system should really get is award. Some sites it's very obvious that team members have put many long nights of proggramming into their site, and why should they be beat by a team that spent 20 minutes on it as a afterthought. (unless that twenty minutes made a very good site)

I believe the ones that should win this award are the teams that have put effort in to thier site, advertise for FIRST and thier team, have a rather simple layout for those seeking knowledge, and are actually used by the teams.

PS: The whole student design thing should be an issue, but that shouldn't detract from a perfectly good site, just so long as students did spend a good deal of time working on it.

Anyway, i'm done spouting.

(and please note, our team website isn't really a good example of what i think will win this award, but i'm working on that:) )

meaubry

28-01-2003, 22:58

On behave of the ChiefDelphi team, I just want to thank everyone for the nice words about our site. Which wouldn't be nearly as nice without the hardwork and dedication of Brandon. Our team is so very blessed to have him be part of, what we consider "our contribution to the FIRST community".
This site takes alot of dedicated people to help moderate all the forums. We would like to thank them for their assistance. We realized a long time ago, that the FIRST community needed "a place to go", where opinions and ideas could be shared. Where the students, teachers and engineers could "hang out" and have fun, debate topics, vote on ideas, etc. It's been our pleasure to do this for ALL of you, and us too!
It's my understanding that our website doesn't meet the criteria (as I understand them) so, we won't be submitting it for consideration of "student built and run" website award. And that's okay with us, because the VERY BEST REWARD we could receive is just watching the counter that registers the number of users, the number of posts and threads, and the number of hits. It's really amazing to think we actually have exceeded 100,000 hits a day. And knowing that what we had HOPED FOR - has exceeded even our wildest expectations! Thanks, for posting - keep it up!

HFWang

29-01-2003, 00:29

The problem with websites is that they are too general.

You can just do too darn much with a website. Unless someone wants to lay down the law and say "We are looking for websites that effectively explain FIRST and blah blah blah" it is almost impossible (IMO) to have unbiased reviews. The website award could really be a Photoshop award, or a Most-Active-Forum award, or a "Look-Ma!-I-Got-Billions-of-Features" award.

I don't mean this as to point at any person in particular (just to fend off flames or annoyance from the masses. ;) )

So that brings us back to the original question... what does FIRST want us to do? IMO the current system sounds very arbitrary. A bunch of student "webmasters" (what defines a webmaster?) goes around and assigns sites some grade. Whoopee. IMHO, that is just silly. Who decides what is worth how much, how can we assign equal, impartial scores across the board?

So I guess my main concern is what exactly is this award supposed to be? I know the animation award is to create an effective advert for FIRST, but what are the websites? There are far too many unknowns to objectively and fairly evaluate student's work, and too much room for deviance under current guidelines to say what a team's "work" is (for instance, does the ChiefDelphi forum really count as the teams? Remember, they aren't the only ones posting).

Lalalala. /me ends semi-long ramble.

Duke 13370

29-01-2003, 08:00

I already shared my thoughts on what the website award is, but i am not Dean Kamen, and really can't be certain.

I still think the website award is like the animation one, it should be an advertisement for FIRST, however FIRST is not grading these -- we are. Each student voter can decide what they think is good in a site, and what they think makes a bad site.

jessjank.

29-01-2003, 12:03

I would definitely have to agree with most of the things everyone has said so far. A team website should be completely student produced... and why shouldn't I think that because I do the majority of the updating of our site and some design as well. A site should be an "Advertisment", if you will, for FIRST and your team, as well as spread and emphasize the message of FIRST, but I believe it should also be visually pleasing. Right now, we have two awesome team members working daily on adding some creative flash aspects to our site and working with it's design. The effort they have put in is amazing and if a site is to win the award for best website, there must be a lot of student effort presented.T hough the new additions won't be up for probably a week or so, you can check out our current site at:http://www.cybersonics.org
I know that when one of the three of us judges the websites of the teams going to the three regionals our team is attending (Chesapeake, Philadelphia, and J & J), we are going to be looking for a site that is creative, organized, does an amazing job of spreading the message and explaining their team, visually pleasing, and has that extra something that makes us say "wow". I can't wait to begin looking at all the great sites!
Good luck everyone!:)

Jess Jankowitsch
Cybersonics Technology Team 103

Elgin Clock

29-01-2003, 12:32

GO TO PG. 25 (http://www2.usfirst.org/2003comp/Awards_03.pdf)
It explains everything.

HFWang

29-01-2003, 21:35

It explains everything and nothing. Its fairly vague...

iBob

16-02-2003, 14:42

I personally feel that the rules are very vague and it's been tough to make my team's site to fit them well. I've done my best and being the only person working on it have done a nice job, or at least i've been told. I explain my team, i have bi-weekly articles, i have pictures, a calendar and history along with a member and mentor bio. Go ahead and take a look here (http://www.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/robotics), in my mind the winning site should be more than pretty, it should explain about a team and what they do.

Brandon Martus

16-02-2003, 14:54

Originally posted by iBob
Go ahead and take a look here (http://www.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/robotics), in my mind the winning site should be more than pretty, it should explain about a team and what they do.

Looks good. Got alot of good content.

EIROBOTICS86

18-02-2003, 20:48

I vote for This SIte I Know its my teams site but its built by two students from our team me being one of themEIROBOTICS.COM (http://www.eirobotics.com)

sandy

18-02-2003, 22:37

I won't deny the usefulness of Chief Delphi, but as I believe another user mentioned earlier, it's not student designed. Note the "powered by vBulliten" at the bottom. While a student may have customized to appearance and set-up of the forum, vBulliten did all the work.

I haven't had a chance to look over the website award rules just yet, I have an example on what I personally believe one of the winning websites should resemble.

http://www.rockingsocks.net (http://mort.rockingsocks.net)

This is kind of an "underground" website for my team, team 11. While we haven't quite yet asked our mentor to allow us to use it as team 11's official website, it's student made and run.

I made the background images, wrote the html from scratch, and host it on my own webspace. The site is entirely student run. While you guys may not like it, or may think it doesn't quite fit the standards, but this is an example of what I think FIRST is asking for.

You like the site? I haven't added a guestbook just yet (oops) but I'd love to know what you think. My e-mail is on there somewhere, drop me a message.

You know, reading over what I wrote, I just realized how serious sounding I was... creepy. That's so unlike me... :yikes:

Brandon Martus

18-02-2003, 23:20

Originally posted by sandy
I won't deny the usefulness of Chief Delphi, but as I believe another user mentioned earlier, it's not student designed. Note the "powered by vBulliten" at the bottom. While a student may have customized to appearance and set-up of the forum, vBulliten did all the work.

ChiefDelphi.com isn't being entered in the website competition.

And, what you mentioned about 'powered by vBulletin' is part of the weak areas of the web competition rules that should really be clarified by FIRST (if it hasn't, already..). What exactly is allowed, and isn't allowed. Does the student have to do 100% all of it. Can the student install forum/poll/management software? What tools can & cannot be used. I know a lot of that would rely on gracious professionalism, but so does alot of other aspects of the whole competition in general.

Redhead Jokes

18-02-2003, 23:50

Does just having the team web linked from usfirst get you submitted into the website competition for each regional you attend? i'm confused cuz what about the links to just the school's web that has nothing to do with robotics?

And, am I the only one who didn't realize each team is supposed to assign a student to judge websites before going to the regional?

about awards (http://www2.usfirst.org/2003comp/Awards_03.pdf)

see 7.4

Petey

19-02-2003, 08:02

The simple fact is that none of us have a website that is completely independent from a third party program not made by the students.

Although Chief Delphi does stretch the limits on how much a website is done by a third party program and how much is done by students, the simple fact that so many people use it and benefit from it should be enough to make them the top contendor for their regional website competition.

The differing views and tastes of the judges will give a certain ambiguity to the voting process, but that is part of the spice of the competition.

As long as a website is clean (not gaudy, no strobe lights), informative (white papers, FIRST announcements, links) and interactive (forums, webchats, pMachine, postnuke, link databases, shout outs), then it should be a contendor.

--Petey

camtunkpa

19-02-2003, 08:30

Hey the Tigertrons, team 222 of Tunkhannock PA, has a newly updated site. www.tahsroboticsteam.org You can find pictures of our new robot and such, please sign the guestbook and give us any feedback you have.

Thanks,
Cliff

iBob

19-02-2003, 15:11

Ok, as far as i know, "entering" the website competition is just having your link in your info on the FIRST site, correct? Has anyone read anything further?

Team 240's Homepage (http://www.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/robotics)

bs3468

19-02-2003, 19:51

i would like to say thank you to chiefdelphi for being so professional about this. taking themselves out of the running because they dont meet criteria is a very professional thing to do. most people would whine and complain until they won, and they didn't. they realise the goal is not to win(although it is fun), it is to enrich the experience of being on a team and being active. my congratulations to chiefdelphi team 47 on a great site, and for realizing not everything is about winning. on that note, where do i submit my teams websitE? i can;t figure it out.
thanks guys,
and a response asap would be greatly appreciated

Redhead Jokes

19-02-2003, 20:08

Originally posted by bs3468
taking themselves out of the running because they dont meet criteria they realise the goal is not to win it is to enrich the experience of being on a team and being active. on that note, where do i submit my teams websitE? i can;t figure it out.
and a response asap would be greatly appreciated

The website award criteria is so vague, I don't think it's clear that Delphi doesn't qualify, altho I do remember Brandon saying he's not a student.

I think the goal of the website award is to get more students creating webs, more teams with webs, and more exposure for the FIRST program. And, like the process of creating a chairman's award, the process of building a team web crystallizes what the team is doing, and could be doing, and helps FIRST team members to see what other teams are doing and what is possible.

I know to our surprise a consultant (whose job it is to raise money) for nonprofit groups and politicians heard of FIRST, searched online, and found our web (before our student built web) and traveled an hour to see our facility and team cuz she was impressed by the web and our focus on encouraging girls. She gave me excellent advice on getting our team money.

BTW, the team web is submitted to the website award consideration by being linked from your team that's listed on whatever regional you're going to. So your team's main contact has to make the student web the main web.

ps. Chief Delphi is my favorite FIRST web.

Petey

19-02-2003, 20:33

Chief Delphi should be in the running. It's up to the judges to decide individually what does and what does not count.

If they pulled themselves out, then I respect them all the more.

Yes, there are different degrees of dependence on your own ingenuity.
Chief Delphi uses third party software entirely.

www.theforceteam.com was created by a friend of mine in GoLive, with pics he created, and is hosted off the webserver that is sitting on my homework room floor right next to me, using PHP, SSL, mySQL, FTP, and Apache that I set up myself and am hosting off my own DSL connection.

Now, I'm sure there are some people out there who wrote their HTML in Notepad, drew and scanned their pics, and built their own webserver as well.

But the simple fact is that not one person out here has built a computer from scratch, then an operating system, then a text editor, then a programming language viewable by conventional web browsers, and THEN made their own site, hosted off a completely new international system of networks comprising a virtual seperate Internet and convinced everyone else to tap into it as well.
That's an example of the only purely student-designed-and-run website possible.

Obviously, no one has done that.

Where do you draw the line on reliance?

Up for the judges to decide.

I'd say that as long as something is configured by students, they have a right to use it. Mentors can't be the primary builders, nor can a sponsor. But as long as students do most of the work and do not claim to have written the source code to whatever third party programs they are using, they're fine.

--Petey

bs3468

19-02-2003, 20:33

thanks, i wasnt saying chiefdelphi shouldnt be allowed to submit, but they took themselves out of the running when brandon said ChiefDelphi.com isn't being entered in the website competition. . just to clear it up. and check out my team website, completely made by two students me and the other webmaster ina little program called notepad. www.chhsrobotics.com i think its cool give me some feedback though.

thanks,
ben smelley

bs3468

19-02-2003, 20:36

and i totally agree FIRST needs to draw the line on reliance. obviously noone has done it all from scratch, but they shouldnt have someone make their site for them and expect to win, or even submit it. thanks, and i agree. also btw the judges are the students.

AJ Quick

19-02-2003, 20:53

Well.. the fact is a site can be fully built without using Third Party Code. I could easily write a forum or message board in php. But the main reason why I wouldn't, is TIME.

A message board would take me about a week to write a nice one, but why should I when phpBB is right there, and is free.. and requires.. well some/lots of personal modification... it still saves time.

FRANK(WGH)

19-02-2003, 21:14

I don't wnat to sound like i'm trying to put chief down but i think that the judges will take into consideration that there are alot of teams out there and that they will have to judge chief alot harder than anyone else to make it fair for evryone else.At least i hope they will do that. That way everyone has a chance.

In a way this will be like the chairman's award in the past. it doesn't matter how much better the quality is, it's more of the content. It's not the size that matters it's the quality of work by the students, because after all FIRST was made for the students mainly.

and Chief has my vote but i will always consider the others before i make my final decision.:]

iBob

20-02-2003, 15:42

Originally posted by FRANK(WGH)
and Chief has my vote but i will always consider the others before i make my final decision.:]

Ok, i've been reading every post in this thread, and if everyone else would take the few extra minutes to, you'd realize chief can't have your vote, I'm not really criticizing, cause i like this site just as much but its just a note so you don't confuse the judges.

Team 240's "student built/run" Homepage (http://www.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/robotics)

Brandon Martus

20-02-2003, 16:41

Originally posted by Brandon Martus
ChiefDelphi.com isn't being entered in the website competition.

sandy

20-02-2003, 19:25

As Brandon Martus keeps reminding us, chiefdelphi isn't entering the competition. So that clears up one problem.

But no one understands what in all of patatootie the judges want out of our websites. They didn't clarify. And we can't seem to agree on what's student run, and what isn't.

But the simple fact is that not one person out here has built a computer from scratch, then an operating system, then a text editor, then a programming language viewable by conventional web browsers, and THEN made their own site, hosted off a completely new international system of networks comprising a virtual seperate Internet and convinced everyone else to tap into it as well.

Very good point. Since this is the first year they've had a website competition, I guess it's only fair to expect a few kinks in the competition. But trust me, this is one major kink? I've read the entire thread, and I've only come up with this one useless solution:

Just enter your website, and hope it qualifies for whatever they were hoping for.

And in FIRST, where it's all about math and science--not guess-and-check--it's a really stupid plan. I know that. But maybe next year the website problem will be sorted out a bit better and we won't have to sit here scratching our nogins. I know my nogins starting to hurt from all the scratching.

mort's official website (http://users.nac.net/morobot)
mort's unofficial "made-in-notepad-by-a-student" website (http://mort.rockingsocks.net)

FRANK(WGH)

20-02-2003, 21:00

i must not have read all of the post since there are lots of them.
anyway i think the rest of my post expresed my point.:ahh:

Jack

20-02-2003, 21:33

Originally posted by sandy
Just enter your website, and hope it qualifies for whatever they were hoping for.

Um... you are aware that it's student judged. That means that for the regionals that team 201 is attending (my team) I'm going to go here: http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2003/rgevents.htm

Then, I'll click view team list for whatever the event is. All the teams with a link as the team name, I'm going to visit. Then, I'm going to pick what I think is the best site, and submit a form at the regional for team.

SO... to find out what the 'judges' want, ask the members of CD what they think of your site.

-----
That is the meaning of "Student Judged" ;)