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FIRST Topsite?
I was thinking about starting a FIRST Topsite; where FIRST websites can join and have their websites listed. Everyone that joins gets a code which they place on their website.
This code will display a 88x31 image with the rank number on it. example: ![]() Anybody interested in helping out with this project? I've started working on it here: http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/ :) Quote:
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Looks good..
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looks really cool idea-- would help out w/ scouting really easy --good job so far
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Re: FIRST Topsite?
Very nice, but remember that you run the risk of running into the same issues that CD runs into in terms of reputation.
If anything, its a great way to quickly get to all the websites without going through the FIRST site or the website thread. Every so often, I'll see a site with the "FIRST Robotics WebRing" (or some variation of it). The image will at least show that you're attempting to reach out to the FIRST community as a whole, which is great. |
Re: FIRST Topsite?
Sadly, the image doesn't follow FIRST logo usage guidelines. You'll need probably need to change it. To view the entire exhaustive list of guidelines, click here
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Those things are so abused though - everyone just goes and clicks there own site everyday. :( If not for that I'd be all for it...
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Anyway, I agree you with completely. Most top sites become blind linking farms from shoddy webmasters who wish to capture the elusive first place. Also, if you are coding this from scratch its nice, but not necessary because there are many free, opensource top sites apps out there (usually in PHP). I think Fantastico! (an auto installer included with many hosting plans) has one. A quick google search turned up quite a few such as:] these. BTW, the demo link isnt working... |
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well, i would be intrested
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My goal (when starting this post) was to see how many people would be interested. I can easily write my own script from nothing in a day or so, modifying or adding anything needed. You may register or join now (at the link provided), and all the info will be transfered to the improved topsite later on. :) Quote:
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OK I have added two new features...
Everytime your website loads, a hit will be added automatically (You don't have to visit the topsite). One hit will be counted per ip address per 60 seconds. (So if you want to cheat, you have to wait 60 seconds). :yikes: Note: this time can be extended. |
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I wouldn't go by average hits/day alone, you should also have it so that it checks votes, and limit the number of votes per ip address to one, and determine how significant each one should be by determining what would produce the greatest standard deviation among sites.
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And by "Everytime your website loads" he means whenever you show the image that links to it ;) ) |
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If you have the site set a cookie the contains the time last clicked, that doesnt expire for say, a month then log IPs. If a user has the cookie but a different IP, add the IP to a list to not count for that site. If the IP matches but not the cookie give that user a vote HOWEVER there vote would be worth half of whatever the last vote was worth.
For example, the first time it would be 1 pt second time it would be .5 point then .25 etc. etc. starting again every other week. Actually thinking about it, make it only decrease every 2 times that IP comes except for the first time. (first visit 1 pt, 2nd and 3rd .5 point etc.) If the user has the cookie, they dont count as anything. (except when visiting another site) |
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Or for the unique IP requirements, people could just use a proxy server to get another IP address, there really is almost no way to have it work by clicks alone, that is why a portion of the rank should be determined by voters, that are other websites, that have signed up for an account with you. |
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There'll probably be many ways to cheat the system no matter what precautions you use, but I like the idea of this.
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I think it would be a good idea, I would try to fit it into the site somehow, it would also be nice to have a list of all of FIRSTs team websites, count me in
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All right, I take back what I said. It is really cool, easy, and simple. Plus, for whatever reason my team's site is #1... and I didn't [intentionally] cheat. I think that 60 seconds or whatever is way too short. Mainly because I have been working on my teams website for the last hour or so and I didn't realize that it was counting every page view on your site (oops! sorry). Now I am stuck with #1 (not complaining, just explaining :P) and feel bad. Anyway, I would increase the amount of time/IP logging just so normal website viewers won't falsely boost the ratings.
Thanks anyway, it is alot cooler than I thought (when I last posted it was down). EDIT: 109 Hits now... heh. I didn't vote though, and we have an 8.5. Score!(well, sort of) |
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We won't have any trouble with cookies, since cookies are not used. I'm going to add a 24 hour limit per ip per one hit to each website.
Oh yeah, voting needs a limit too. :) |
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I assume your modifing it right now.. heh. I was working on my site again and got a dreaded X of doom! Went to the topsite and was returned the error
"Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (11)" Those changes sound good to me! I really wasn't trying to cheat the system, I just happen to have no life and I am constantly working on our site. :o |
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What I made it do, is record the ip and the id of hit... The list can be found here: http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/data/online.db.php
After 12 hours the listed that is over 12 hours old, "should" go away. And that ip address can once again contribute one more hit for that webpage. |
Re: FIRST Topsite?
ill help you out if you want.
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Sounds cool. I've added it to our portal on ChiefDelphi.
You're going to change the FIRST logo, though, right? It violates their usage policies.. |
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Is the violation the fact that the word "FIRST" is no longer attached to the FIRST logo?
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This is indeed pretty cool, I guess in a way I added a counter?
cool idea. -Mike |
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You will get all the information about the logo you want over there. |
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The topsite page is not loading this morning. I'm not sure I can leave an image on our welcome page that isn't going to consistently load. Whats happening?
edit: it's loading now .. hmm. |
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I think we'll be adding it to sparky384.com, don't know yet. Also, the banner URL, do you enter the url to the banner you created thats on our page, or our own banner? Thanks.
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when you register the page will generate html code that say you have to insert on your site within 24 hrs (http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/img.php?id=16 ).
EXAMPLE: "<a href="http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/index.php?id=16" target="_blank"><img src="http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/img.php?id=16" border="0"></a>" Then you create a banner to put on the Topsite like most of the other teams. |
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inconsiderate fiends... ;) EDIT: First has become wayyyyy too protective of the logo. I think the topsite looked awesome before the change... now the first logo just looks like it was stuck there. As for the buttons, I think they look great too. Perhaps you could do something similar to the First Wiki and get it authorized? We had a similar issue with logo guidelines making our t-shirts. Our main sponsor, GE Healthcare, insisted that we use their exact logo and font (I don't blame them). The problem was that it took them two weeks to get the font to us, and we still dont have our shirts in (or even being made for that matter). Part of it was getting all the logo guidelines, but I will admit that it was also our shirt manufacturer being.. well, you can guess. After we told him we had a finished logo and shirt layout, he decided that we took too long and made his own using "6 hours of my time", which he apparently expects us to pay for. /rant EDIT 2: "#08004 Too many connections". Yep, thanks, and I hope you can make it more reliable because it slows down our whole website when it dosen't work. This post does not represent the opinions of GE Healtcare or its employees. No llamas were hurt in the production of this post. |
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Ok I just fixed the problem... Even if the whole database gets wiped out :ahh: an image will still be displayed.
You will see a: ![]() Meaning there is some error... It's better then an [x] :D |
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Nice icon man. Hope we can get one of those for our website, if we win of course, which will probably not happen. But check out our website. www.railerobotics.com
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Calvin, excellent. Thanks for responding to our requests!
webranger7, You do not need to win any awards or anything to be listed on the top site. Just tell your webmaster to sign up, and then paste the code supplied by the script into your websites main page. Every time your image is loaded by a visitor (each 24 hours), a hit is added to the top site's counter. Based on your hits, you are positioned on it accordingly. |
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Don't worry, I am da webmasta. But please, check this out. www.railerobotics.com
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Robosapien (Tim) had a good idea to modify the first WIKI logo. so i did. i think it looks pretty neat. how ever you might be able to improve on it.
![]() (This probably goes agianst first logo rules) |
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Hmm... We could, but is First Wiki ok with that?
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Ok we just had one of those MySQL errors. The image thing worked (the error.gif) was displayed, but it slowed down the website a bit.
Here is the code used: PHP Code:
hmmm how about: PHP Code:
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Re: FIRST Topsite?
i dont know. you might want to email them and ask. i can look into it but it will take some time.
EDIT: I just read that first wiki is hosted by chiefdelphi and neither first nor CD take resposibility for the content. so i am assuming that some one withing first approved the logo. so i guess we have to contact first. |
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PHP Code:
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Ok thanks, I'll test it out. :)
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i emailed first about the logo. hopefully they will get back to me later today.
you can email them at frcteams@usfirst.org if you have any other questions. |
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-Mike |
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it appears to be running off of his team server in a subdirectory.
Calvin if you want i can host the site on one of my servers. currently i have one empty server and one empty sql database. |
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The website is hosted for free at f2o.org... The reason that the MySQL database was having problem was because f2o was moving all their "free" accounts to a new server. This week, they have been trying to get everything to properly work again and so sometimes the database would be turned off so they can repair or do something.
I'm thinking about just converting everything to txt files. txt files seem more reliable, then a database. :] Quote:
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Phil, is this a dedicated server, or just an account? What type of connection are you running? Calvin, what type of bandwidth are we talking about? The buttons aren't that large of files, and I couldn't imagine that it would use more than a gig of bandwidth on normal use. If Phil has a dedicated server available to donate, go with that, but if you still are looking, I have a reseller account from surpasshosting.com which runs my team site. Its a reseller account though so its intended to run multiple domains and the like. I could offer somewhere around 5 gigs of bandwidth and 500MB-1Gig of space (I would give more, but through the reseller control panel you set how much space each website is allocated. It doesn't let you use that space for anything else besides that account.) Good luck |
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the server that i would be using is an account. the server i run the 486 website from is an identical account (identical in features) and work extremely well. i also run a third as a test server. servers are all run by 1and1. Currently i have a calendar, forum and news all running out of one sql. i havent experienced any problems
Server storage limit is 500meg Sql DB limit is 100meg. (this should be large enough) Bandwidth i beleive is 2 gb |
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anyway - how did you eventually decide to arrange them? it looks nice too :ahh: |
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You can see it here: http://snowshoe.f2o.org/cubeitTEST/forum.php Run 100% on txt files. |
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I use a combination of files and databases on my website, the databases work a lot faster, I see no reason not to use them, they are very simple to do and much faster...
...also they are more secure, they do not put your website available for change by anyone that is hosted by the same server. |
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Everything seems to work fine now, and we have 19 members! :yikes: Once we reach 25 I'll be adding a search engine. Any other suggestions?
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well for the "cheating issue" I'd say go ahead and record all ratings via a mysql database, because all a user has to do is disable cookies (easy thing to do on firefox) and they can repeatedly vote (I've tried it, It works :), you may deduct a 10 point vote from team1039.org). There are ways of getting the "true IP" of a computer (if they are using a proxy), here's the one that I use (PHP):
function f_GetIP() { // Get the true IP of the user, runs through various methods of getting the IP if (isSet($_SERVER)) { if (isSet($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"])) { $realip = $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]; } elseif (isSet($_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"])) { $realip = $_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"]; } else { $realip = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]; } } else { if ( getenv( 'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR' ) ) { $realip = getenv( 'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR' ); } elseif ( getenv( 'HTTP_CLIENT_IP' ) ) { $realip = getenv( 'HTTP_CLIENT_IP' ); } else { $realip = getenv( 'REMOTE_ADDR' ); } } return $realip; // Return the IP. } |
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I would still recommending you do something like this though Calvin, because you should take many precaussions |
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Down again? Wow. I wonder if it would be possible to mask the icon with one hosted locally - as long as its the correct ranking?
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Was the whole website down or did you see an error? For the button did you see a ??? image or an [x]? :ahh:
I feel like I’m letting all you guys down... :( |
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Somehow i think Cd isn't going to be shifted from the top....
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Its cool, things like this take time to perfect. I appreciate the time you have put into it. As far as I know this is the first FIRST (redundant?) topsite, and it has been progressing nicely. I bet that it will be a lot more popular next year as developers begin to design their websites again (seems like a waste to me - why not just update and improve?). If this is because of your free hosting, remember that there are people out there will host you for free. (Have you looked at the offer made by sevaa.com? |
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Starting this morning the site has moved to a new URL FirstTopsite.com. We have also switched to a more reliable web hosting provider. However the old site has not been shut down buy us. Its just another host provider outage.
Please change your links From: <a href="http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/index.php?id=16" target="_blank">First Topsite<br><br><img src="http://franklin.f2o.org/topsite/img.php?id=16" border="0"> To: <a href="http://www.firsttopsite.com/index.php?id=16" target="_blank">First Topsite<br><br><img src="http://www.firsttopsite.com/img.php?id=16" border="0"> Please rememberer to change your ID tag "index.php?id=16" as well. **NOTE: You only need to change the id if you copy the above** |
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Excellent! Thanks for this great news. I have already updated the code on our website.
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If you do not know your id number, you can find it here: http://firsttopsite.com/lostid.php
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is there any way to make the link work so u just input ur team number b/c the way u have it u have to constantly modify the URL as ur rank changes. it's hassle for my site b/c i dont have control over the site, so i cant upload anything i want when i want to, changes usually occur in one week
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I think you are thinking the the "ID" in your URL is your ranking which it is not. You need not change anything because the images on your website is being propagated from the FIRST Topsite server. your URLs are merely a pointer to this image. As for the "ID'" this is the tag which identifies your team number in the database. so, when the database detects a change in rank it looks at all the "ID" numbers and changes the image number to correspond with your rank on the site. Thus you need not to change anything. |
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I was wondering if anyone knew anything about FIRST Topsite getting reset or if they lost the data? I went to our team's website and noticed we had jumped WAY up then went to the website and saw that nearly everyone had way lower Total accesses and per day totals. Just curious if this might be a server crash or done purposely?
-Mike |
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-Mike |
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it seems your right. ill have to look into this. thanks for bringing it to our attention.
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I have always intended of resetting the values at the beginning of new build season.
Your ranking is based on the “average hits” you receive per day. Since some websites were less active last build season than this season, their average will be low no matter how much they improved this season. I apologies for any problems this might have caused. Quote:
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-Mike |
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Other than that, great job with the new updates! I really like the stats page, that will likely be a valuable resource to see how frequently visited sites are. I'm guessing that the old comment/forum system has been merged into the review process... very nice. |
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I'll probably redo it tomorrow or something, but if anyone knows anything about that please post. |
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does it work now?
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http://www.team1065.com/misc/buttonv2.PNG thats the button I'm trying to upload. -- Edit: it works now. |
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ok should work now.
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I noticed something last night and checked again today. Currently on topsite, my team's website is listed as #60, but the block on our website says 64. Seems to possibly be an error in linking the user number?
-Mike |
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I am curious about the site, but a number of computes and locations that i have tried to access the site from get a forbidden 403 error. I am not the only one that seems to have this problem.
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The system is set to update ranks a few times a day. That is why you have noticed a delay. This may be changed in the near future.
As for the 403 and other errors, if this happens, please send a screen shot with the said error and address of the page, to webmaster AT firsttopsite DOT com, so that we can resolve this issue. Thanks. |
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no more errors... whatever it was, it has been fixed.
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