Website competition

[Brandon Martus]

I have to agree with what MattyCincinnati said. FIRST really needs to specify what is allowed and what isn't allowed, in regards to the website competition. I encourage some of you to post a few specific questions on the Jive forums, to clear up some of the ambiguity.

Thanks for all the positive comments about chiefdelphi.com. I'm pretty sure Chief Delphi will not be competing in the website competition as I do most of the website development and am not a student on the team, nor have I ever technically been a student on the team. We're very happy you think highly of the site, and are glad you continue to visit it daily (some of you hourly).

activemx is correct. vBulletin is used as a base for most things on this website. Its nice to have all of the session handling, template system, and user functionality already built, so we can focus on the unique functionality in new projects. The image gallery and white papers section actually were perl scripts written before we used vBulletin, which were then ported over to PHP to use with vBulletin. The Ventures system was written specifically to work with vBulletin, as was the 'Extra Discussion' area.

So, I'd go look around for other student-built websites to nominate for the website award. Two of my personal favorites would have to be http://www.feds201.com and http://www.rage173.org

Jack, from Team 201, has done some modifications to phpBB to create a Fantasy FIRST league. I believe focus has been shifted towards scouting now, with areas for each team to list their abilities and others to comment on them.

Joel J, from Team 173, has done a great job with this years website for their team. I personally like the image gallery, which is similar to ours, but has a great deal of little extras that make it enjoyable to view. (ie: the 'All' link, slide shows, etc) The overall design of their website looks very neat and professional.

If I had to vote, those two would be very high on my list. I can't remember offhand the team number or URL, but there was a canadian team's website that I liked too. And, I obviously cannot visit every FIRST website, or remember every FIRST website, so this is just my little opinion, based on very little team site browsing.

Anyway -- my point is .. If you are seriously going to be competing in the website competition I would read over the vauge rules and try to get some clarifications on what can and cannot be done by students and non-students, what is required on the website, how it is maintained, what is not allowed, etc.

/Brandon

Wow. I think this may be my longest post ... ever.