1745 New Website
 

www.pearcerobotics.com

I want to hear peoples thoughts on this. Its 100% student designed and built. they have been working on it for a while and started asking me questions on it. I am no web designer so I don't know what to say ( other than I think its great). Its built as a page for potential sponsor, onlookers, and a portal for team members( document management system, communication tools, group management systems, etc).

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Tell your students they did an excellent job. They made a well designed web site.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Very clean website!

Personally didn't find any issues with it while going through all tabs. Echo my praise to your web designers. :)

P.S. Nice integration of Boeing's colors.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Nice site, but it's a free template (http://joomla15.siteground.com/?temp...eground-j15-5). So maybe next time don't claim it is 100% student designed and built.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

That's terrible. Using templates really takes out a lot of the whole making a website process because that's where you learn the most.

As far as the website goes, the titles on each page should be larger (probably about 24pt-ish) and paragraph spacing should be increased.

Content is pretty good except that there should be an about page instead of that info being on the front page. You should also have a little more information on your past and your various projects outside of FIRST and BEST. It'd be nice to see pictures beyond from before 2006 too if possible!

Ryan
Team 245

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Well when you really think about it, using any kind of CMS is kinda iffy because it isn't 100% your code. Our team is planning on true 100% student built. I only pointed out the template thing because Stuart didn't seem to know. Hint: If you are going to claim a template as your own, at least go all the way and remove the link at the bottom;)

Re: 1745 New Website
 

While technically you can't claim a Joomla! or Wordpress based site as "100% student built", it is pretty darn hard to build a good site using a CMS. While I wish I could put together a site using HTML, PHP, and MySQL written entirely with my own code, I can't. We just needed a functional website to present our content, not a project for the students (since we have no one interested in web this season).

I understand where you guys are coming from, but you can learn a lot working with a CMS. I actually became more interested in PHP and MySQL due to working with some of the components and plugins in Joomla! than I have before. And you can make some good money working with a lot of the popular content management systems.

So, really, it all depends on the situation, but I agree that it's really stepping on a line by claiming the whole entire thing as yours.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

First of all, I can garuntee most web sites in first aren't 100% student built because there are only a hand full of concepts and ideas in the webosphere when it comes to structure and design.

Unless you're completely on the edge of everything, making something completely from flash with the most random ways of doing the most random things, NO FIRST website can claim the 100% mark.

That said, what is wrong with using a template? Isn't the end user interface and end user opinion of the site what really matters?

Wordpress, Joomla, WIKI, etc., are ALL management systems and templates CAN and ARE modified to meet needs.

Also you should keep in mind, thanks to Joomla we have an extensive back end that makes it more than a website to us.

Pavan

Re: 1745 New Website
 

As a software engineer, I know that anytime you don't have to "re-invent the wheel" it's a good thing. Take advantage of any tools you can to make your life easier.

If you ask the team that builds the robot if they used tools, I'm sure they'd say yes. If you asked them if they built their own tools, they'd probably say no.

I did check out your site and I liked it. So much so, that I wrote a short blog entry today about it. Check it out at: http://rogeronfirst.blogspot.com

Re: 1745 New Website
 

I should clarify what 100% means. that means that it was entirely our students that built the site. as far as using a CMS yes I still consider this to be 100% ours. first its a open source site and we are acknowledging credit( while we did modify the template, heavily. we still give credit where credit is owed). even if we did it in PHP and SQl, unless you can claim to have built the SQL engine, you cant call it yours ,by that logic.

As far as just a CMS we have a lot of custom PHP running in the background linking our document management system with the user management system with the joomla front end. that way a student on the programing team who is an officer and also on the chairmans presentation team has access to documents and different news from other users.

and as far as content before 2006 . . well we call that the before time. while pictures and documents do exist, their digital copies have long since been lost.

also thanks for the input Im passing along all the tips and tricks to the students.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

@synthe3tk and Dave,

I get what you both are saying. I have used Joomla!, Drupal, Nuke PHP, Silverlight, LightCMS, Wordpress, and the list goes on. I love them all. My only quip is claiming the 100% student built thing. This is because I know teams who put long hours into their websites (making them from scratch mind you) and are proud to say their sites are 100% student made. If the term can be used simple by changing the header, then I have some misunderstanding of the term 100%.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

BTW, Roger I like your site. I bookmarked it;)

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Personally I completely despise CMS sites and any template that isn't home made from the person/group presenting the content, but then I also know HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, JScript, VBScript, and a handful of others.

That being said, in FIRST it isn't about how the site is made its about the content presented. So for those teams who don't have the resources or enough students interested, a CMS/Template site is perfect.

Anyway, this template looks ok, it gets the job you needed done and adequately gives your team a web presence [more then an astonishing number of other teams can say]

Re: 1745 New Website
 

I agree ^. I think a CMS/Template site would be fine for these circumstances. Just don't claim it to be 100% you. How do/should the judges account for templates in the website awards?

Re: 1745 New Website
 

You are so right... layering, encapsulation, and not-reinventing-the-wheel are (some of) the things that computers are based off of. There is nothing wrong with using a CMS- it reduced the time-to-completion by a thousandfold than if your students had coded the site from scratch.


i wouldn't call it 100% yours because of the CMS thing, but i definitely give you a 100% for the heavy modding that went into it.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Just saying (I'm not sure how wise it is to say this), I alone was able to design and code a fully functional website in a little over an hour. It would probably take LONGER to use a CMS.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

I think a more approriate way to say it is 100% student designed?!?

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Was that sarcasm?

Re: 1745 New Website
 

Cool. For you, I'm sure it would take longer to use a CMS. I can put together a fairly good site in about an hour with a CMS, since I've been working with them for a while now.

It really all depends on the situation and person, and I really don't see why people feel the need to go all postal on CMS-users.

Re: 1745 New Website
 

not really...just trying to explain it better