Why do people ignore team websites?

[johnmaguire2013]

DISCLAIMER: I am a web developer. I joined robotics because the programming bit sounded like fun. Since I was 8, I've been playing with HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and Python. I like creating websites more than any other robotics-related task. With that said...

Why do so many teams ignore their website? My team has many sub-teams, including Mechanical, Electrical, PR/Media, and a Website team, and the website team does just as much work, and spends just as much time perfecting the website as any other.

I've spoken to some other teams and a lot of them say it's because it doesn't really count for anything in the competition. That it's a sort of useless award. While this may be true, I think that learning to design and code designs for the web is an important skill to learn. It's also a large part of marketing, and if I'm not mistaken, Dean Kamen likes to liken FRC teams to companies.

So I guess my question is twofold: How much time does your team spend on the website? And why or why not?

[Cal578]

Good question on an important subject.

We take our website fairly seriously, especially the last few years. We've won the Excellence award and Best Website (regional) several times. For the last couple of years, I've been pushing our website developers to make the website more USEFUL. This might be a partial answer to your question. I've seen many teams make websites that look cool, especially to teenagers. But I have no reason to go back to their website, or refer other people to it, because I don't get anything valuable from it. Now we have a website I'm proud of, not just because it looks good, but because it contains useful content like:

• Many ways to contact our team
• Instructions for joining the team forums
• Instructions for joining the team Yahoo! mailing list
• Team calendar (which is kept up to date)

So, for example, whenever I host a parent meeting for new members, I show them the website first. And I say, "If you don't remember anything else from this meeting, remember 'fairportfirst.com'. It will get you all the information that I'm presenting here." And it works! So now, I don't care if we win the website award or not (though I certainly think we deserve to); I know we have a website worth not ignoring!

Of course, there's still room for improvement. But I like the direction we're going. And I encourage all teams to take their website seriously, support the developers, and get mentors for them. The website is a crucial part of the technology that we're supposed to be inspiring.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by johnmaguire2013

So I guess my question is twofold: How much time does your team spend on the website? And why or why not?

I can probably agree with you that, often, teams' websites are underappreciated. I can say that, on my team, the website is very important and we use it as our primary means of communication and information distribution. As for time I've put into writing it, I've probably spent hundreds of hours writing code and content, along with another member who has probably put in just as much. And I think it shows - we won best website at the CT Regional last year, and I'm pretty happy with how it looks now.

[rachelholladay]

I inherited our team's website from my sister the summer before my freshman year. It had always been small, ignored and (at some points) nonexistent. Over the past three years I have poured my life into it. I am the only website person (we do not have a team for it) and work on it in addition to being the controls captain and a large organizer for our outreach. I started out with eight pages and taught myself HTML and CSS. I spent hours and hours scanning over the websites of all the teams I considered amazing. I made charts and tables and lists of what every FIRST website simply had to have. In particular 1114 served as inspiration. My freshman year we got Website Excellence and last year (when i was a sophomore) we won Best Website at the Bayou. Our website URL (http://wwww.team1912.com) is now used by our entire team as a powerful tool. I used to have to nag everyone to even acknowledging our site. Imagine my inner joy when I hear our mentors brag about it to sponsors, VIPs, etc.

I don't know why websites get ignored. I know our's was for a very long time.

[Koko Ed]

Not all FIRST teams are large enough to tackle all aspects of FIRST so they have to bypass certain things like web or animation or even doing the Chairman's award.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Not all FIRST teams are large enough to tackle all aspects of FIRST so they have to bypass certain things like web or animation or even doing the Chairman's award.

This is exactly it for many teams. 148 did not submit for any of those 3 last year, but this year we have 12 more students than we did last year, and so we had enough to work on that and still dedicate the same number of students to building the robot.

Also, interest and enthusiasm from the students is important. This year we had a student who was enthusiastic about working on Chairman's, and one on Website, and they took the lead on those areas. Last year, we didn't. It makes a big difference when a student WANTS to work on an award, and not just because it needs to be done.

[PayneTrain]

Our team has been in website purgatory for three years, but this year, a sophomore really took the lead on it. I lined it up with finance to buy some great hosting, domain and email, and he has absolutely shot off. Now he just needs me to trickle content to him before the judges get to it...

Our team also hasn't had someone very passionate and able to do the chairman's Award for a while, but I took it over and I loved writing it and giving edits to people. Someone is working on the video with me because she loves video editing.

No one has done animation for our team since 2009 because no one really cares to.

We have around 2 dozen dedicated team members that need to do outreach, fundraising, and build before we can attack supplementary objectives.