Hotbotz 2640 New Website

[Qbot2640]

Thanks everyone for the comments...we appreciate your time and insight.

We will be working to make our site a more cohesive presentation as we continue...but right now it is what best serves our needs. Our team made great use of a Facebook Group page last season for communication and sharing info, but that has fallen out of favor, and we are trying to find a vehicle to electronically pull us all together. While we do understand that the site is intended for a bigger audience than just our team, right now the chief audience is our team, school, and families.

We've checked out a bunch of other team websites, including all of the ones mentioned in the above replies...our team has a much different dynamic than those sites seem to purvey. We sorry so many people seem to have a problem with our pink - but that is not negotiable. We're the Hotbotz...not the "Warmbotz"! We want the site to be fun, above all - and so many of the other team sites seem way too bland.

Again - thanks for the help. We'll try to incorporate as many of the recommendations as we can (other than changing the pink, of course).

[dcarr]

Congratulations on what you've done so far, looking forward to seeing it progress.

In my eyes, the pink isn't really as much an issue as the other design aspects that need some modernization and improvement. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions, I'm sure the other posters would be happy to help as well.

[synth3tk]

The pink really, honestly, wouldn't be so bad as a background and across the entire header. But there should be a different background for the text areas.

I know you mentioned your site was created to meet the needs of your team first, but I hope you come away from this thread with at least some of our suggestions. One that I view as important whether it's an intranet for a Fortune 500 company or a team's public website, is to have common navigation throughout the entire site. It doesn't even have to look the same (although that's strongly encouraged), you just need something somewhere on the page so that people can navigate between pages.

It doesn't look like you're using PHP or any other scripting language, so I guess you could try the suggestion here, although it'll only work if your web server was configured to support it:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/ssi/a/aa052002a.htm

Essentially, you'd make a file "header.html" and just include it at the top of each page.

[cadandcookies]

Yeah, sorry-- like I said, I don't know much about your team's style outside of that website.

Like David said-- the colors are sort of secondary overall to just having a modern interface for your site-- there's a hugely distracting gap between the cool pixel-art style graphics you have and the flat colors elsewhere on the site, not to mention the modern video player (I do love that you're using Vimeo), which really clashes stylistically with the rest of the page. \

There's also that "floating in space" feel of all the graphical elements on the page-- when I highlight I can see that the images on the bottom as a whole line up, but they don't appear to when you're just looking at the page.

As I mentioned before, if you haven't already, looking at other websites that have won awards can be a very, very useful tool to use. Here's a thread that has a list of winners . In particular, you may want to take a look at the following teams' websites:
Team 987 The High Rollers
Team 1114 Simbotics
Team 1429 Team KAOS
Team 1816 The Green Machine

You layout isn't entirely off, but the page as a whole feel a little bit, I'm not sure the best to phrase it, but it looks like the '90s. A website is one of the many public faces a team presents, so finding the balance between a professional look at personal flair is a difficult balancing act-- my team knows that from experience, transferring from a rather unique design that was made completely unmanageable by the fact that the guy that coded it graduated without a clear replacement, to what we have now, which is still very, very much under work, and will be going through a long series of adjustments and alterations to be an appropriate face for our team.

Best of luck in all your endeavors.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by sentientfungus

You layout isn't entirely off, but the page as a whole feel a little bit, I'm not sure the best to phrase it, but it looks like the '90s.

This kinda sums it up. You have an awesome start to the site, if you use Bootstrap to add in a consistent nav bar, page width/grid alignment, and modern fonts & UI elements, your site will go from good to great. And you can keep the pink

[runneals]

Interesting site. There are somethings that could be changed, but I think it looks pretty decent. Are the students designing it? Kudos to them if they are.
I know you guys probably won't want to do this, but I'm telling you anyway, you should try to tone it down a little and make it a bit more professional (better color scheme, less "flashy"ness to it.)

I also suggest that you try to incorporate your top sponsors into your header or homepage. This makes them happy and helps provide better visibility to them. Feel free to check out our website for more ideas as well (www.teamneutrino.org). Feel free to contact me or anyone else I'm sure if you guys have any questions.

Good luck!
David

[Qbot2640]

OK...big changes made, mostly based on everyone's input. Team is having lots of fun with this, and work continues...but please check it out again everyone, and let us know what you think.

http://hotbotz2640.org/

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

OK...big changes made, mostly based on everyone's input. Team is having lots of fun with this, and work continues...but please check it out again everyone, and let us know what you think.

http://hotbotz2640.org/

Huge improvement! You've literally brought your web design forward at least 10 years!

A few quick suggestions:

• Footer should be persistent across all pages
• Header logo should be consistent across all pages
• Font/background contrast is a little off. Consider choosing colors that contrast more with the pink and dark-grey background (white could work, but play with it and see what is easiest to read & aesthetic)

[synth3tk]

1000% better! Good job.

[smcmahon]

I -LOVE- your sponsorship video!

[Qbot2640]

Originally Posted by smcmahon

I -LOVE- your sponsorship video!

Thanks! That was done completely by one member of the team during the summer before her sophomore year. I'll pass on the complement!

Where in the Burgh is your team...I'm originally from the Irwin area. We really wanted to come to the Pittsburgh Regional this year, but it is the same week as our NC event.

[runneals]

WOW! 5000% improvement! Are you guys on Wordpress now then? Kinda looks that way Although what I said before (Including your top sponsors on each page) would be nice, you don't have to do it. Also if you lost some of the pink in the footer (from the bottom), and continued the background, that would make the page look a bit nicer, but again, you don't have to do any of this, just some friendly comments

Happy Holidays!
-David

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by runneals

Are you guys on Wordpress now then?

A quick look at the code reveals that no, they are not using wordpress.