Website critiques?
 

A couple other girls on my team and I have been working on this website for a while, and I'm looking for a fresh pair of eyes to critique our layout, and the website in general. There are a few things that I already know need to be fleshed out or revamped. Any feedback at all is awesome!

Thanks

www.team2399.org

Re: Website critiques?
 

Hi, I am the head of Team 4's website.

I like the color scheme of your website. I have a few suggestions. First, I would center align you menu bar, because it looks a little shifted to the right. I think that it would look cleaner in the center. Also, you should always make your header images "non-draggable."

Since your image is not placed as a CSS background, add the following code to the end of your img tag for the header image:
Example:
I would also recommend that you format your HTML and CSS code.
For HTML, use: freeformatter.com/html-formatter.html
for CSS, you can look at our website's code: team4element.com/assets/css/style.css

All of your CSS should be in external documents and then you would reference them into your HTML Documents.

I would recommend that you make your website's HTML and CSS code W3 Validated. You can check it using the following links:

HTML: validator.w3.org
CSS: jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

If you want, I can review and grade your website according to the FRC Website Award Criteria. I would just take a little while. If you are going to make major changes from the state that it is in now, I would like to grade it before and after, to see the differences.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me. I am here to help anyone that needs it! :]

Otherwise, I like the overall design of your website and it is very attractive. I would just make a few changes and your team should have an awesome website.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Solid and clean design.

Needs more embarrassing pictures of Ed V. though. :p

Nice 2012 robot by the way!

Re: Website critiques?
 

First impression: GREAT! The website definitely has the right style for an all-girls team.

To discuss styling more specifically: the page looks a little empty. The header "Welcome to the Fighting Unicorn's Website" also sounds a tad cliche, like it's a website made back in the days before CSS.

The large team picture drives home the all-girl nature of the team, a unique thing. It must stay.

Be sure to read the website award criteria and Logo standards and follow the random little things in them (i.e. the FIRST logo is a little bit too small on your page). Furthermore, the word FIRST should be italicized.

Under the "sponsors" dropdown, you should have a page that lists all your sponsors, from most to least.

Re: Website critiques?
 

I'll try and see what's going on with that menu bar, thanks for reminding me. And thanks for the code for the non-draggable header. I'm at something of a disadvantage because I'm just learning html and css, so I have trouble fixing the more specific things.
I've been trying that out on a couple pages and it looks like it's going to be a decent amount of work. Do you have to screen every single page individually?
That would be really nice, but I'm not sure we're going to be making major changes during the summer. Looking at the criteria, I can already see some issues, but it would be nice to see where we're starting from score-wise.
It's surprisingly difficult to put hats on Ed... I think the only one we have is on there!
Ah... it needs to be at least .5" tall. I'll see what I can do there, and go around italicizing things. Is it necessary to include the "®"?
If you click on "Sponsors", it will show you our list of sponsors and their logos.

Re: Website critiques?
 

No, do not include the ®. There is already a mark in the FIRST logo, and per the standards, only one is required.

You might want to add an explicit button to the dropdowns that does the same thing as clicking on the item - I didn't notice it, and chances are, neither will the website evaluators.

Re: Website critiques?
 

No, I just do it on our main page, because I use a system called Jekyll where I create a template page from scratch, and then insert content on all of the pages. I am careful though, that my content is HTML valid. (Making sure that all images have an alt and a title). I just make sure that our template is free of any errors.

Again, if you need any help, I am here to help you. If you don't understand a tag or how to do something, I will be able to answer your question or provide you with an example.

I will definitely start working on your website grading sheet. I learned though, that you do not want to be making your website just to win the award, you want to have an information database for your team, as well as brand who you really are. But, you can still do it for the award, to prove that you accomplished everything.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Some generalized thoughts..

You definitely show the style of your team through the color of your website. Im assuming you main colors are black, pink and blue? I like that your header gives the basics of your team, that is not only very helpful to the user but is also the first thing website judges look for. Some one already mentioned about the FIRST logo and I agree that you might want to make it a little larger. Perhaps use the official logo with the word 'FIRST' below the 3 shapes and make it about the size of the unicorn on the other side? That might bring a nice level of balance. I like your social media links but I would move them a little farther from the FIRST logo, those two sets look a little too close. Your footer also brings your team's style together very well.

Your about FIRST and home pages are solid, me gusta. Most people I see have 'Contact Us' as a separate tab so it is quick to get to, but that is purely a personal choice. You history section is very standardized which gives the user continuity. This maybe a typo but on the 2012 one the font seems to alternate colors. I would stick to one font color for the whole website because that makes things easier to read.

For your student bios I would either make a person's information all on one line or indent the details. That way its a little easier to process. By the way for your mentors page instead of the picture my browser printed [flagallery gid=1 name="Mentors"]. I like the way you structured your alumni page but the past mentors sliding piece doesn't seem to match the rest of the page. If the alumni and past mentors are on the same page, I'd do them in the same style. But just thought.

Its a little confusing that the tabs are links but then there are subtabs under them. I thought that 'News' was just the heading for the photos tab and only by accident did I realize that there was also a news page. I do really like the way you have structured your image gallery, one of the best I've seen in a while. I liked resources, news, this years game and becoming a sponsor pages. Most teams use Google Calendar but you have found an alternative that works just as good, so coolio.

While I wasnt sure on the 'past mentors' set-up I really liked it for the sponsors. My only suggestion would be to make each image for the sponsor also be a link to their homepage. That way you can click the image for Rockwell Automation and go to their site. Right now you have the titles for your webpages structured as "FIRST Team 2399:The Fighting Unicorns >> Name of Page". I was looking through your website and had several tabs open and based on the small tab name I couldn't tell which page was which quickly because the from the tab I could only read "FIRST Team 2399:The Figh" . The way to get around this would be to name the pages: 'Name of Page >> FIRST Team 2399:The Fighting Unicorns". Then again that's just personal habit of mine.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Thank you! I don't really have anyone to ask about things except Google and the aforementioned Ed. He has to fix the website when I break it... >.>

I think it's going to be most important as a record of team history- we forget more of it every year- and as a website we can show potential sponsors and people who are new to FIRST.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Yeah, I was concerned about that, but I'm not sure what's a good solution. I can't take credit for the gallery- it's a really good plugin that connects to flickr. One thing I forgot to mention is that we're using wordpress.

I can't figure out how to change this one. The titles of the pages are just "News" "Home", etc, but the tab titles won't change.

These are all really good suggestions and reminders for me... thanks!!

Re: Website critiques?
 

You may have to modify your WordPress template to switch the order of your site's name and the page titles within the title tag. See the wp_title reference for an example.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Another quick note - on your slideshow (which I also like) the opening picture is of the Girls of Steel. For a second, since it was the first photo shown, I was a little confused and thought this was the Girls of Steel website. I would suggest making the first picture of your team, because it is your website. Then the second one could be Girls of Steel (because after all, they are awesome).

Re: Website critiques?
 

You have no idea how much I love girls of steel, they're so awesome! Repping the all girls teams. But yeah, that's a good point. We're in there, too, but most of us got cut off. I fixed it up!! Thanks!

Re: Website critiques?
 

Your Team's Website--Graded Rubric:

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. :)
You have a great website and are on the road to having an AWESOME website! When you are ready to be graded again, please let me know. I would also have someone else grade it right now, as well as after you fix it up.

Re: Website critiques?
 

Hi All,

It has been about 8 months since our site launched (www.lahsrobotics.org).

With school starting soon, we wanted to update our site in any way, shape or form.

I wanted to ask you if you have any comments, suggestions, or concerns about our site.

www.lahsrobotics.org - SITE

Thanks,
LAHS Robotics Team 114
EagleStrike

Re: Website critiques?
 

Great website! I have nothing to say that wasn't already mentioned.


I think you should change some colors, it's a bit hard to read that grey text over black background.
I like the design of the main page, but maybe it would be more interesting with some text, maybe a stub about your team or about FIRST. It's pretty unique as it is though.
About the image galleries: the galleries themselves are convinient and well organized, but I found the gallery menu a bit confusing, consider adding a theme image next to each gallery's link.
Notice, when not on the main page, the logo in the menu bar is cut off.

Over than that, you have a nice website :)

I must mention that I don't work with website and am not familiar with FIRST's requirements regarding websites.

Re: Website critiques?
 

I went to go look at your site and it said, "This website is under construction". I guess I should try again later..?

Re: Website critiques?
 

Hey guys! Your website help has been indispensable so far, so I thought I might pose another question if anyone is still around to help.

I have a navigation problem. Kind of a big one, it seems. On our menu bar, there are three items with dropdowns - Team 2399, News, and Sponsors. Whenever I give our page to a new user, they never realize that these items are clickable in addition to the pages in their dropdown menus. This is a problem I've been considering for a while, and a few of you pointed it out as well.
There have been a few solutions I have considered, but none of them have been quite as effective or clean as I would've hoped.

Any ideas?

thanks,
gracie
EDIT: Just to clarify, I mean that they don't notice the items themselves are clickable, only thinking the dropdown items are.

Re: Website critiques?
 

I'm going to suggest what I do on my website and feel free to use it a food for thought.

So let's say I want to show information about my sponsors and finance and all that jazz. I have a tab on the nav bar that is labelled "Finance" and under that are the subtabs of Current Sponsors, Business Plan and Corporate Sponsorship. The user can click any of the subtabs so go to that page, but the actual box of 'Finance' is a null link. To clarify, a snippet of code is below.


<li><a href="#">Finance</a>
<ul><li><a href="sponsors.html">Current Sponsors</a></li>
<li><a href="business_plan.html">Business Plan</a></li>
<li><a href="corporate.html">Corporate Sponsorship</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

So in the case of your sponsor page my suggestion would be make two subtabs of something like 'Our sponsors' and 'become a sponsor'. That way the user would know that if there were no subtabs then use the main tab but if there are subtabs, use only those.

Just a thought.

Re: Website critiques?
 

I'm not sure whether you meant the problem is with the items or the dropdowns, so I'll answer for both.

For the dropdown, try to make the color change more significant. As is, it is barely noticable.

For the items, I believe making a half-a-second pause between moving the mouse to an item and the opening of the dropdown might get the desired effect (it doesn't have to be half a second, but something really short, maybe even noticable only at an unconscious level), but it's just an assumption.
This isn't based on anything besides my gut feeling.