I agree with everything that has been stated already. Lots of good info. That is what CD is all about. Here is my $0.02 worth.
User Experience
Your website is what 99% of the public and other teams will know about you. It is a resource for your team, your school, team parents and your sponsors. Design your site with that in mind. You want your sponsors to brag about you and link to the team site. You want the team parents using the site. Keep your audience in mind when you design.
Make the design a team effort. Web design is usually a solo job, but the team needs to agree on what the site says about them. Using other sets of eye balls will only benefit the outcome. What you might think looks good, may not to others. Compromise and don't take suggestions as criticisms.
Websites are never "done". They are a fluid, living extension of what your team is up to. Keep it up to date, but don't overload it with posts that don't benefit the reader. Content is the reason people visit and return to the site.
Social media is very important. It is one way of showing how you communicate with your team. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google groups or what ever you use link to it. Please note that content on those medias reflects onto the team. I will follow links extensively to see what you are sharing with me.
The internet is built on the premise that we will link to outside sources of information. An important aspect about FIRST is this great community we all belong to. Links to other teams, Bills Blog and most importantly Chief Delphi will always enhance the user experience.
Under the hood
First impressions are important. You need to grab the users attention, by balancing what they see first. Don't make too large a header, get content and pictures on the screen the user will see first. Newspapers call it "above the fold".
Make your navigation very easy to understand and in a technology that will work for all. Remember most users are not web-savy and don't have great hardware. If you use flash, make sure there is backup code that will kick in.
Test your site in all browsers. Most web developers don't use IE as their default browser, but most users do. Test in IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. If something does not look right in one of these, don't hesitate to look for a simpler solution.
Make sure your site validates. The W3C has a unified
validator that will test both html and css. Fix as many problems as possible. Hint: Start at the top. Errors cascade. Fix a few and revalidate. Also run
cynthiasays to check your accessibility.
Check your links. Having broken links hurts the users. I use
Xenu. It looks at everything.
You don't need to spend big bucks on a program to make your site. There are many free ones like
NVU that you can use. The high end programs all have limited time demos if you want to go that route. (Perhaps FIRST should get software donated for this)
Copyrights. If you use outside images on your site, you must give credit to the copyright holder. Almost no one acknowledges that the FIRST logo you use on the site is owned by FIRST. A page linked from your footer is a good place for this. You sponsors logos all belong to them. Give them credit.
FIRST logo. Read and follow the usage
guidelines for using the logo.
Spell Check.