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.

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.

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

GO TO PG. 25
It explains everything.

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

My Feelings
 

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, in my mind the winning site should be more than pretty, it should explain about a team and what they do.

Re: My Feelings
 

Looks good. Got alot of good content.

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

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

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:

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.

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

see 7.4

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

check out our website!!!!
 

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

Clarification
 

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

very professional
 

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