New Website Feedback

[bdbayes]

My team is looking to launch a new website and would like some feedback on it before we launch it. The new website url is http://bayessoftware.com/robotics/joomla. Thank you to everyone that gives feedback.

[zim2411]

Hm, sorry if I'm a bit harsh. It's hard to judge with most of the pages blank.

• Text size buttons do nothing
• Needs a FIRST logo
• Slide show images are way distorted, and don't look good
• Team name/logo don't really look good. The platypus is cute, but low res. Do you have a better version somewhere?
• Logo should link back to home page
• Escaped quotes on front page are unnecessary
• You should hide the "Written by Administrator" on pages
• Login link shouldn't be brighter and more noticeable than main navigation. General viewers won't be logging into your site.
• I couldn't tell what your FRC team number was until I went to "About Us". Evaluators want to find that right away, but in your case it's a site for 3 teams, so I'm not sure how that works out.

[bdbayes]

No, you were not harsh at all. I appreciate your comments. Much of the content still needs to be written. I agree, it is confusing that there are multiple teams using the same website. This is a problem that still needs to be worked out. Thank you again for your comments.

[bdbayes]

What browser did you happen to use?

[Boydean]

Some minor thoughts.

- Move "Team" login to a link in the footer, as stated before; this is relavent to non-team visitors. Also, there is no need for a separate link for "Password Reset" if its already on the login page. Doing this should enable you to move "Contact Us" into one row links.

- FIRST logo needs to be on the front page. I would recommend just replacing "Learn about FIRST" with the logo linking to the site, and then add a "Learn more about FIRST" link at the end of "What is FIRST" paragraph.

- I would put a link to the contact form in the content on "About Us". You want to plug "Contact Us" in as content on the site as possible.

- "Events" page is a great idea, but navigating a calendar can be intimidating for a visitor. I would just have a list of upcoming events above the calendar.

- Whats the difference between the "News Blog" and the "Journal"? Might be better off to consolidate them both and just have a blog. If you want to talk about minor news items about the team create a Twitter account and embed it.

These are just some recommendations, and I agree with the ones Peter had. Overall the site is well laid out and navigations is easy, great job!

[EthanMiller]

Going to http://bayessoftware.com/robotics/joomla/ and http://bayessoftware.com/robotics/ give different sites. That should be fixed.

Graphic artist in me coming out, the color choices for the header look good, but tend to make it read as "What is FIRST" and "New Website Features." That's great for those two, but when you get to "Competition Checklist" there's a bit of dissonance - it feels like Checklist should be black, not competition.

Regarding the three teams, the site I'm building for my team solves it with a portal - Three big buttons for the sites for the three teams and a list of upcoming events for all teams underneath. Allows each team to have a different feel to it - Our FRC team is the K Island Gears, with colors blue and yellow, whereas one of our FTC teams is the Zip Ties, colors Black and Neon,* and the other is the Hippy Bots, colors tie-die. I don't know if your teams are separate like that, but it's probably worth considering. That would also allow you to get the clunky FJH/GKHS next to a dense set of numbers away.

The problem, IMHO, with the current logo block is twofold. It doesn't give any real identity other than the platypus. That is, the sets of letters and numbers isn't memorable. The other problem is that it's dense - it takes too long to parse it. Again, just my opinion. Splitting the site as above could help.

That said, you've already got the CMS set up, and I don't know how much work reorganization on that scale with Joomla.

Otherwise, I really like the colors and layout.

[bdbayes]

Thank you to everyone for having contributed these ideas. I realize that the two sites are not the same. The joomla subdirectory is for the website that is being designed to replace the site that is currently in the robotics directory. When the new website is finished, it will be moved to replace the current website in the robotics directory. What portal software would be recommended by anyone. Thank you again to everyone that has contributed.

[EthanMiller]

I just designed mine in HTML and CSS. Other than the news (hurrah for JavaScript) it's all pretty static, and the layout was pretty simple for the page.

The design was all done in Adobe DreamWeaver CS5