Website Help
 

Hey this is team 2333. We are trying to make a new website for next year. The site we used for the 2010 website wasnt the best and we want to be able to customize it more however no one on our team is skilled in HTML codes. So we were wondering if any team knows a really good site to help us build a new website.

Thanks for any help!

Re: Website Help
 

One of the quickest ways i've seen to get a good looking website up when you don't know much about it is to use iWeb (which comes standard on most Mac's - which is great since most schools have a lot of Mac's sitting around...). Our team has used it now for the past 2 years, mostly because we can't afford the time to make one "by hand".

http://therobettes.com/

Re: Website Help
 

iWeb is a really great tool for team sites. 2791 used iWeb and we won the WPI Website Award.

http://team2791.com/The_Shaker_Robotics_Team/Home.html

Re: Website Help
 

if you're willing to either just use themes made by other people, or take the time to do one yourself, there's a number of decent Content Management Systems (CMS) that are available. If I remember correctly, there are several teams using Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress, and I think there are at least a couple using DotNetNuke. As far as putting up content goes, they're relatively simple to use, however customizing can be a bit more complicated, especially if you don't have anyone familiar with the HTML or PHP languages.

Re: Website Help
 

http://www.w3schools.com/ is easily the best place to learn almost all the basics.

Chief delphi and other forums can be a great place to ask questions and if you EVER have a question you need answered email me at likzuz@gmail.com or cio@ravonics.net. I love answering website emails and I check my email a lot. A bit too much if you ask people close to me but that's okay. Personally we had a mentor who taught me everything I know last year and set me loose this year so if you ever need help there will never be a lack of FIRST teams to help out.

Re: Website Help
 

Hi,
I am the webgeek from team 573 - Team573.com and a Senior at Br. Rice High School. If you are using godaddy for your hosting it can be overwhelming to navigate their control panels especially if you are new to web design.

Some hosting services offer something called fantastico which will preinstall CMS (content management systems) such as wordpress , drupal, joomla and all you have to do is add your graphics and content. It would be the quickest way to set up but you will want to get into editing the CSS scripts and other things once you start getting into using the CMS preinstalls.

I have been designing websites for fun since 2006, and started a business in 2008. I have designed for companies that use many different hosting companies. I find the most flexible control panel to use for custom designs for the companies I do work for is cpanel. It lets me custom code html, as well as code php.

If you need a server that offers cpanel or if you want to preinstall wordpress etc.. using fantastico, feel free to contact me . I have server space and can donate some space to your team's website

Re: Website Help
 

I've learned everything I know about web design using tizag.com. Before you dive into web design, I highly recommend going through their HTML and CSS tutorials.

Even if you use a Content Management System, you won't get anywhere without the basic HTML and CSS first. Then comes the fun stuff - PHP/MySQL or Ruby, Javascript, but don't worry about this stuff yet : )

Re: Website Help
 

One of the most valuable resources that I have used is http://reference.sitepoint.com/html . It can guide you through the very basic structures of a web site, all the way to css and javascript. The site has examples of code as well. I'm sure this resource, along with some of the others mentioned in previous posts will help you. Good Luck to you and your team in building and maintaining your web site.

Re: Website Help
 

I agree with the posts above; W3 schools is very helpful.

I'd suggest using some CSS. If using Dreamweaver and editing page properties, the CSS is already written. Css makes formatting much easier. You just add elements to work on layouts, fonts, and colors. Here is the CSS Tutorial on W3 Schools: http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Also, check if your school has the Adobe Suite in any computer labs. If your team doesn't have Dreamweaver, see if your school will allow you to work in the labs with the programs. Not only is Dreamweaver helpful for beginners with the "Design View", but the Suite also includes Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, and many other useful programs. Good luck!

http://www.teambroncobots.com

Re: Website Help
 

418's website is built using Joomla, and we paid a couple bucks for the template (since I had no time to design one myself). It was easier to build than one would think, and we didn't need to know anything about CSS or HTML or PHP. It's nice to have a main website that ANYONE can edit/modify with ease. We got most of the modules built in Joomla for us (free on the web, just look around for them), and the only one that we had to customize was the countdown clock (and Jumi is a wonderful tool to build custom modules using PHP within Joomla when you get to that point).

Anyway, the point is that it's great to have something that lasts - even when your website programmer graduates or leaves without teaching a new group how to do things. We had a big problem of having to redesign websites because nobody knew how they worked. Now we have a framework that anyone can maintain (especially the non-programmers).

http://www.lasarobotics.org

-Danny