Website Dogfooding Request

[nathan_hui]

Loads a bit slow... Approximately 2 seconds on my computer, about a second based on pingdom from NY. A good chunk of it is facebook...

Kind of big for the first page - 2 MB. Most of it is the header png.

Front page looks okay. The first thing I see is the photo slider. Cool pictures. But I don't really know what they are. Maybe add some captions? Links to the featured thing (about page for team, robot page, etc.)?

Second thing I see is the Facebook feed. As someone who's not on your team and just wants to learn about your team, the feed throws me off, because the first thing on there is "Tomorrow. 8 am - 2 pm American Legion Hall. Be there.". Okay. It's your team thing, and this isn't fully integrated yet.

If I'm coming as someone who wants to learn more about your team, perhaps I want to contact you. I don't immediately see a "Contact Us!" sign, or something along those lines. Then I see a menu with "Media" and "Contact". But wait, don't you already have "Photos" and "Videos"? I'm confused... Maybe combine the Photos and Videos under Media, and have Contact Us immediately visible.

Also odd is the four other teams linked at the bottom of your homepage. Even though I'm familiar with FIRST, I get confused when I see multiple teams on the same page, which implies multiple FRC teams (unless otherwise specified).

For your robot page, it's hard to quickly scroll through the slider of all of your robots. The funny end motion for the slider is also a little distracting, but it's COOL!!! I did notice that you don't have links for the older robots, which may be a project you want to set aside for the future.

For the links at the bottom of each robot page, don't you think they should be the other way around? My first impression was "what? that's backwards", but then I think a bit, and it kind of makes sense. Good idea though, but maybe make them a little friendlier to people with tunnel vision.

You also may want to put the latest robot first in your slider, and not put Murphy twice at the end.

I like the student team page. It gives a great look into your team, and lets other people know who your team actually is. One suggestion would be to remove the html tags from the hover description, if possible.

I'm not entirely sure you want to call all of your mentors welders, unless that's what they do on your team... Also, the first mentor picture might be broken. Also, what would a 5th year team mentor be? Super-senior?

For photos, the change in site background is a little jarring. Same for videos, but less so because it's Youtube.

I like the temporary page in Sponsors. Consider making that your 404 page. Not necessarily professional, but that's cool and in style for an FRC team.

For your media page, I don't know. I'm not going to go into the ethics of whether or not to release promotional graphics, but labeling it "Media" probably isn't exactly what you want to do.

No offense intended, but your contact us form looks like a support request form from a corporate entity. Which, frankly, scares me. It may be advantageous to use only email, and include ways of contacting your lead mentor as well.

If you're looking to enter the website in the FRC website judging, make sure you include a page talking about what FIRST is. Might also want to fix your USFIRST link so it doesn't 404.

It looks like a great website. Keep your content flowing, and I'm sure you'll impress people.

[schreiberbj]

Your navigation bar lags quite a bit. It looks like you are doing it with javascript. Consider rewriting it to only use css.

[Djbeadle]

Originally Posted by schreiberbj

Your navigation bar lags quite a bit. It looks like you are doing it with javascript. Consider rewriting it to only use css.

Out of curiosity, what browser are you using?

[schreiberbj]

Originally Posted by Djbeadle

Out of curiosity, what browser are you using?

Google Chrome 28.0.1500.72. Windows 7.

I should add that the lag isn't terrible, but it is noticeable. I also notice it in IE 10.

[Djbeadle]

Originally Posted by schreiberbj

Google Chrome 28.0.1500.72. Windows 7.

I should add that the lag isn't terrible, but it is noticeable. I also notice it in IE 10.

When you say lag, what are you referring to? The drop down menus appearing? The color changing when you hover over the different options? Or is it the last to appear on the page?

[rachelholladay]

I'll drop a couple of notes:

Mentioned Lag: I wouldn't really consider it an issue. I'm using Chrome on Windows 8 and the only thing was I saw as the images loaded. Unless you aren't sizing the images compatible to what they are normally displayed as (therefore making the browser re-size) you are fine.

General Structure: Pretty solid and clean. The header is well made in that it gives the team name, number and logo. I assume your team colors are blue, dark blue and yellow? The grey sidebars next to the white background did make me think I was viewing a PDF for a second. I like the consistency in layout across the site and the nav bar seemed to work and look fine. This is probably a bit more of a personal opinion, but I'm used to seeing the 'About Us' type tabs as one of the first (left to right) and the 'Contact Us' tab being last. You have four team's website linked at the bottom and while I'm love supporting other teams, its a little unclear why those four are directly linked on every page. Are they sister teams?

Homepage: The spinning gallery is eye-catching and if there is a way to add captions that would be even better. I liked the prominent links to social medias and the twitter feed, always a nice touch. Glancing through the home page there seems to be no reference to where the team is geographically, so it would be nice to list your school, town or state. Also, many team pages have a short intro paragraph on their website saying a little bit about who they are, what FIRST is and what they do.

Team: I really, really liked the detail given to the robots. Each page has several pictures, it gives the breakdown of basic info for people who know what they are looking for and yet you also provide the more user-friendly explanation that would help people new to FIRST. The mentor page has the title of 'welding' which seems a bit odd, but I'm assuming the picture below showcase your mentors mentoring. The method of listing the student member was fairly personalized and the lightboxes are a nice effect.

Media: I was not expecting to be linked to external sites (in the case of Youtube for videos and the gallery for pictures). If all your videos are on Youtube it makes sense to use it, but I would suggest making the link target="_blank" so that even when the user is redirected to Youtube, your team website still stays up in their tabs, making ti more likely that they will continue to browse your site. Same thing for the gallery. I realize its not really an 'external' site but it is structured differently and therefore, at first glance, gives the appearance of being at least a bit external. The method of storing pictures through the gallery does seem to work well. I like its system. The fact that you have a page to distribute your team graphics is very professional, nice branding. I'm on the fence on whether 'Team Graphics' would be more descriptive than just 'Graphics'. Eh, your call.

Sponsors: I like it. It's bold.

History: Keeping it all on one page with the use of tabs is very lovely, it groups it together with less clicking and less scrolling. The paragraphs seem relatively small, but they do get the information across and there is something to be said for brevity (which I have the tendency to lack..)

Contact Us: Solid and interactive. Got love those Google widgets. Speaking of which, no team calendar?

About Us: This too has the boldness of the sponsor page. Although it is the second time around..

As a side note, because this is Chief Delphi, every time I read the name of this thread, I mentally read 'Watchdog error'.

[ThatHat]

A few things:

Menu: I like the choice of font, it's clear and legible. I would suggest trying the same font as your logo if you can find it.

Robots: The gallery is a good way to showcase each year's robots, and each robot's page has meaningful information that would be helpful when trawling for designs. I like the idea of the chart that lays out the essential info for the bots, but it could use some formatting and styling work to make it fit in with the rest of the page more. Perhaps rounder corners, and experiment with using your team colors for the cells. Another idea would be to use a lighter color background.

Students/Mentors Pages: Great idea organizing people by departments. Consider putting names under each picture instead of just in the popup photo viewer. It helps establish the purpose of the page as a showcase of students and mentors rather than another photo section. You could also use the photo viewer to host a short biography of each person.

History: Excellent use of tabs to separate each year's history. Consider stretching the row of tabs wider to give symmetry or match the main menu bar.

Error: Love the "Something Went Wrong" picture. Please keep that in there.