Decommissioning of USFIRST.org archived site

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

This is pretty disappointing. I use the archived site fairly exclusively.

[tjf]

The most worrying part about this whole decommissioning is that they don't seem to know what parts people actually use...

Do they even have a better, more easily accessible equivalent on the new site yet? Even simple items are buried deep withing the site. I wouldn't even consider moving until you know your target platform is ready. It's like trying to move from one apartment to another but not even knowing if the new apartment is done, or even if it's had it's electrical and plumbing all done.

Either way... Good luck to them, and please don't break everything. It's one thing for a team to make a mistake and them be out of luck, but FIRST making a tragic error puts everyone at a disadvantage. There simply is no alternative to the old system for being straight to the point and clean.

[bdaroz]

My initial reaction (and reply to their tweet about it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl0jg8rFFlw

Second, a number of times I've searched on Google for FRC-related stuff, it's sent me to the usfirst site, not firstinspires. This tells me a few things - either the content is not on firstinspires, is not indexed well, or that so many other sites are still linking to the old site that Google thinks it's more authoritative. (Page Rank)

Third, right in the middle of build season?!? I'd get it if it got decommissioned after Champs in the off season or something, but seriously. Don't they have better things to do?

[Lireal]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

Third, right in the middle of build season?!? I'd get it if it got decommissioned after Champs in the off season or something, but seriously. Don't they have better things to do?

It will hopefully help them fix those issues actually, because they do not have to spend anymore effort maintaining the old site.

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by Lireal

It will hopefully help them fix those issues actually, because they do not have to spend anymore effort maintaining the old site.

I'm sorry... but the amount of effort "maintaining" an older site, i.e. just keeping it running, is utterly dwarfed by the amount of work they need to put into their current problems on the "new" site. It's not like the archive site is getting new content.

Besides, last I checked all the old blogs on the new site that were migrated over still have broken links. The amount of time it would take to fix that alone is larger than the time required to maintain the old site.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by tjf

The most worrying part about this whole decommissioning is that they don't seem to know what parts people actually use...

This seems unlikely on a substantive level, given that I can tell what people actually use, at least to some degree of comparative accuracy. Alexa, SimilarWeb, and a bunch of the smaller checkers I looked at all agree that firstinspires gets about 3 times as much traffic as usfirst. Which is good, but that's still a lot of usfirst traffic.

Moreover, both checkers agree that firstinspires gets most of its traffic from web searches like "first", "first robotics", "fll", "frc", etc. For its part, usfirst traffic mostly comes from "stims" "tims" "vims" kind of stuff. This should give HQ a pretty good idea of who's going where and why--and how to fix it. An speaking of fixing things, the vast majority of users landing on usfirst--after you omit the Googlers--came directly from firstinspires. (firstinspires is also directing to usfirst, though it's to my.usfirst.org, which they may be keeping. SimilarWeb tells me this is the #3 outgoing site for firstinspires after youtube and firstinspires' own blob core.)

I really hope they fix all that before kickoff and decommissioning.

[kmehta]

I've asked FIRST to remove the restrictive robots.txt rules so that archive.org can crawl and preserve the original website.

[runneals]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

I'm sorry... but the amount of effort "maintaining" an older site, i.e. just keeping it running, is utterly dwarfed by the amount of work they need to put into their current problems on the "new" site. It's not like the archive site is getting new content.

Besides, last I checked all the old blogs on the new site that were migrated over still have broken links. The amount of time it would take to fix that alone is larger than the time required to maintain the old site.

Their manuals (volunteers) still reference some stuff that's not up on the new site yet. Like seriously, how hard is it to replicate everything over to a new site?!?!

[Deetman]

I feel like this page isn't well known but is a quick way to get to the official event team lists and results. http://frc-events.firstinspires.org

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

My initial reaction (and reply to their tweet about it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl0jg8rFFlw

https://youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ

[cbf]

This is bad.

FIRST seems to not understand that some of us use the old stuff. For example, this Fall we built a demo bot out of some old FTC parts we had lying around. But I had a terrible time trying to find documentation about setting up the software. There were plenty of non-FIRST sites that had overviews about this, but for the real details they all linked to documentation on the FIRST web site -- that appears to have been completely removed from the World Wide Web. A mere broken link we could have dealt with -- but this stuff was completely gone.

It cost nearly nothing to keep a site of static content on the web nowadays.

You really need to think about creating stable URLs to old content -- especially documentation. Yes, FTC may not use NXT bricks anymore, but some of us still have them around.

At least stuff like cRIOs and Jaguars are in better shape -- mostly because the real documentation was at the vendor sites, not FIRST's.

[headlight]

This doesn't directly address the problem, but I have found that FIRST HQ's phone support is very good. Not many questions asked, get to a polite human relatively quickly, and they seem to be able to easily accomplish most tasks that people are having trouble with. It is almost to the point where I start with a call, rather than going to the website. I'm sure they will be glad to help find information that is not readily available on the new website.

I call (800) 871-8326, then press 2. After that, pick from the following menu:

1. Team support/general information - The general place to start.
2. Finance, accounts payable/receivable
3. Marketing and Communications
4. FIRST place?
5. Development/Financial support of FIRST
6. Volunteer Information
7. Human Resources
8. Office of the President
9. Procurement or Shipping

Even on busy days I don't hold for more than 15 minutes, and the person who answers the phone has always been able to do what was needed very quickly (no supervisor approval).

[ahartnet]

Anyone know if there's an easy to download or access copy of the database accessible through https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso? Once they archive this site - I can't imagine how I'll find this type of data anymore.

[maths222]

Originally Posted by ahartnet

Anyone know if there's an easy to download or access copy of the database accessible through https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso? Once they archive this site - I can't imagine how I'll find this type of data anymore.

I don't think this will be going away as quickly. It is actually not part of the new site, but rather part of the "my.[usfirst/firstinspires].org" site, and is also accessible at https://my.firstinspires.org/myarea/...age=searchform

[ahartnet]

Good to know that it's under the new domain, thanks! The new site focuses so much on big and pretty that I thought they'd get rid of this compact and useful way to view information.