Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

URL: http://boilerinvasion.org

For those who have previously looked at our page, we are no longer running RoR (Ruby on Rails, a nightmare, if you will). Our emphasis for the website was to make use of dynamic content wherever possible. Dynamic menus, news feeds, content, photos, videos etc... We managed to raise ourselves a php giant. We also wanted to create a website that would be easy to edit from a non programer view-point. As long as the person (subteam leader, teacher, student leader or website member) is logged in, a user may edit content on a page at the click of a button, and edit as if it was a word document. Inserting links and images with incredible ease. Source code view is also available for more experienced users.did i mention we have a pooping bunny within the website somewhere?

So, any visual comments, code comments, any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Great content and navigation. The one thing I'm always picky about is the design.

• I'm not a big fan of putting content on a dark background because it's harder to read.
• There's an overdose of inner shadow in the header text.
• Does the header really need West Lafayette High School, IN repeated a thousand times in the background?
• The gradients in your navigation (not the sublinks) should probably not go from black to gold, it just doesn't go well together.
• Add more padding to the left and right of the content.
• Experiment with line-spacing in your paragraphs, may help the reader.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

I think we have most of your suggestions nailed down. Except for the background, we can't really do much about it at this point in time. Besides it saves power! We added more padding and spacing for each line. How does it look?

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

^It doesn't save power unless you use a CRT. Which means you live in 1999.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

exactly, the Matrix Has You!!!!!!!!

buts seriously, what self respecting geek doesn;t warm dinner in front of a bank of old crt tubes, or is that just me...

-Z

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Just you Z :rolleyes:

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

really? dang...

well, i don't actually warm dinner in front of them, but i do have a mock matrix feed... and it looks pretty kick $@#$@#$@#...

i'll try to get a good picture, but, as anyone knows, crt's are notoriously hard to photograph...

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Looks better, I would almost suggest adding even more padding (like 3-5px more) to the left and right.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

working on it, our graphics designers are getting lazier and lazier as the season goes on.

As for saving power... Our school isn't in the best place for monitors. So we save power...

http://www.blackle.com/

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Got most of the things you wanted sorted out. Banner will be edited very soon. and user pages will be added tomorrow. Things are looking pretty good. Any more comments?

oh and blackle... google it. Our school isn't that fancy to have LCD yet, we have CRT everywhere :)

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

why would someone google blackle? wouldn't it make more sense to blackle google?

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

I wasn't impressed with the navigation when I first looked at it; I am still not. Your content is stellar and all improvements are welcome improvements from the derailment the program had last year.

As for the custom Content Management System that the mentors worked on, it is like recreating the wheel. There are already systems that are free and not completely horrible to use. It wasn't really worth the time invested from my point of view.

Then again, I always have to be critical of 461. Right?

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

site looks really nice. like the drop down menus and the large volume of content. good job

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Navigation: What can we do to satisfy you? what do you not like about it? I don't think it's right for me to edit the navigation that we worked on for the season and throw it away just because one or two people said "I don't like it" without explanation.

CMS/Content Management System: Mentors did not do everything, students definitely played a role in the creation of the project. "Reinventing the wheel" hmm... how to word this... There is a sense in pride that you didn't rely on others to do the work for you? (ex. Joomla, wordpress, mediaWiki, drupal, etc) How many teams out there can say they hand coded their entire website using php, and also programmed a content management system that works great, entirely dummy proof...? I think it's awesomely cool, handy, and allows non-programmers a chance at editing the website content. (plus it lightens the load for us website programmers) PHPmyAdmin is a great databse tool.

Any other comments?

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

The navigation, while helpful and noticeable, is semi-limited. When I first checked it out, I navigated to a subpage and had then scrolled over another header link only to find that my sub links were changed as well. It would be nice to be able to move within the same category, if they are always displayed.

I also think your visual style, while everyone loves black, should return to the lighter overall colors you had before. It would look so much better if there was even some sort of gold graphic in the back ground. For a team that stands out at competitions as being bright as the sun, I want to see their website reflect that. Also, don't forget that CAT doesn't want their logo within some unreasonable amount of pixels to other logos. Do what We and Harrison did, just write the name in Impact and change the spacing to about -25. Should look close enough for recognition, but not be the real deal. Our Cat representative said that it was alright.

I think you guys have a great chance for website award based on your content, but I think that a good number of parents judging it may not like the overall appearance and flow.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

I agree that the black background does take some getting used to. However, it is too late to really change that for this season. Part of our problem was that our graphics designer never showed up. Also, I don't see what the problem with the menu is. Javascript menus, such as yours do not keep the drop downs there either. Also, from a workshop about two years ago.. "no information should take more than three clicks to get to." With the current system, it is unnecessary to click on the main tab to get to information. Otherwise, it would either be necessary to click on a tab twice to access the primary tab's page, or it would be necessary to visit that page in order to access any information under that tab. In either case, that is a bad navigation decision. At this point, as far as I can tell, all or at least most of the information which is available can be accessed in three clicks (without using the site map, since that's cheating).

Also, it is worth noting that content was actually a focus this year, as there was content dating back to 2007 which had not yet been added (e.g. 2007 Championship), and there close to nothing about 2008. To be specific, there was nothing about any competitions that we went to except a news article about Boilermaker. The 2008 team history never got fully written last year. Also, FTC and FLL information had not been updated for quite some time (game listed on FTC was the pilot year and FLL was Nano Quest). The awards page did not have anything about 2008 awards, so pictures had to be take and put up, and the sponsor listing was from 2007. As you (hopefully) know, content makes up 50% of the website score.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

Our menus don't stay there, not the argument. The point is that if something is up there, it should be relevant to the information provided. I can be on the Members page and have a link about your Woodie Flowers awards staring me in the face because I scrolled over a button on my way down. It's not a huge problem, it's just a personal itch.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

In any case, there's not much of a way to avoid it without a bad navigation decision, although I can think of a way right now. I'll ask our flash guy if he can set it to always default back to the active tab if you're not moused over the menu, although I don't anticipate that being easy at all (nor particularly neat in the code). At the point in which you mouse over another tab, the computer (which is not psychic) can either assume that you want to know about the information in the tab or can assume that you don't. However, since you moused over it, we have it assuming that you want to know about it.

In either case, your argument was poorly worded, since it said
This implies that your problem was that the links aren't always there, although for, say, dropdown menus, this will always be the case as the menu will collapse. At the least, the tabs are preloaded for you, instead of being blank... (like at the home page). Oh yeah and a quick fix? Mouse over the section that you're on....

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

cute design.
the menu is very kitschy for my opinion.

Re: Team 461 Website feedback wanted~
 

can you define: Kitschy...?