New S.P.A.M. Robotics Website and Forum complete!

[robot180]

I am proud to announce that after this summer of lots of work, the new S.P.A.M. Robotics website is now up and running. Please help me by providing feedback, either here, our new forum, email, or PM here or in our forum.

There are still some things that we are working on. I know that the photo gallery doesn't work correctly in IE. We are working on that. Ignore the members section and the images on the credits page.

Also, if you would like to register in our forums go ahead. Tell your friends about it so they can join as well. (mainly robotics people)

Here is some information:
Website:
http://spamrobotics.com/
Forum:
http://spamrobotics.com/phpbb
Feedback email:
webmaster@spamrobotics.com
User at our forum to send feedback to:
Jon
User on Chiefdelphi to send feedback to:
robot180

Thanks for all of your help.

[Arefin Bari]

The webiste is really nice... i like the way you have every single years robot descriptions, pictures (from competition, build season) and others really organized... also when the forum gets known it will be a great resource... awesome site... SPAM...

[Barry Bonzack]

It looks very professional. I love the improvement, nice work.

[Heretic121]

lvoe the new layout =D very very nicely done...

[jonathan lall]

Looks great, Jon.

[tiffany34990]

THANKS JON AND AUSTIN FOR WORKING ON OUR SITE!!! GREAT JOB OVER THE SUMMER!!!!

[robot180]

Yes and one of the forums is for web design. I will try to help anyone who posts there any question about web design. I don't mean to take traffic away from chiefdelphi, but I want to provide a similar service.

Thanks for any feedback that has been provided and that will be provided. So far, I have received NO negative feedback, and have been called "jon cohen (aka Brandon Martus)" and I keep hearing about how great the site is. I am sure there is something wrong with it. (besides features that we haven't finished obviously)

[Alex Pelan]

A couple of broken images and typos, but besides that, the site is laid out very well and contains interesting information. I can't wait to see what you add in the future.

[Steve Howland]

Very nice site...good work!

I registered on the forums and got the email sent to my yahoo account confirming it just a few seconds ago.

I was very tempted to click on the "Spam" button

[miketwalker]

I like where it's heading... here's a few suggestions that may or may not help ya out:
* The links on the side change location on every page... making you have to search if you thought "After I go to such and such page... I'll go to such and such" and have to look again. I'd suggest doing those sublinks as their own seperate page in the middle or something, and keeping that left bar the same or close to the same (maybe split it into categories and you can fit all links into the sidebar?)
* On the forums, try to match up the color scheme with the rest of the site. It looks nice, but matching it to the rest of the site would look better. Also add links to the Forum, although there is the "Go Back to Spamrobotics.com" link at the top, it would be nice if you can incorporate the side and top linkbar there too
* Main page: You have a bunch of blank space under the s.p.a.m. robotics title on the right side of the body... maybe put a picture of something underneath it in the blank area... maybe a random image changer so each time you come to the page a different image is shown
* Keep that sidebar background running down the page, or end it when the links stop, one or the two... it looks weird going past where the links are but not to the bottom.
* Center the SPAM logo inside the links sidebar, it looks strange right aligned
* Maybe also try seing if you can align the links themselves with each other, because when you are scanning... it's easier to go back to one point on the left, but because of different variations in word length and the right alignment, it's a little harder to follow.
* In the footer, you have 2 instances of thanking the Sevaa.com hosting. I'd suggest getting rid of either the link or the image... and just keeping one. You wanna try to keep the footer as condensed as possible, and currently it's kind've big so in a small page you might scroll down if there's a big footer but nothing important really being there.
* I like the double-spacing... but if you can, it would probably look better without as much space in between the lines of text, because then you can fit more text into a smaller area and it'll be easier for you to work with.
* The links in the top bar are perfect sized. You should try to keep the link size on the links in the left bar the same or smaller than those top bar ones though, because those top ones are the main links around the site while the left bar ones are the sub ones, and since they are the sub-links, being smaller allows the user to recognize the top ones as main links more easily.

The site is being put together very nicely. I like the way your color scheme sticks to 4 main colors... black, blue, red, and white. You might want to encompass more reds and yellows since those make up your logo. The blues and black represent your team shirt colors, so you could possibly incorporate that in a seperate way, for example... blues and blacks could be the text, while you work with reds and yellows to form your backdrops and image borders and such. Currently you mix blues in the sidebar backdrop and the main links, I'd suggest using all same color links (makes it easier to recognize). Maybe using a red in the backdrop for the links could somehow work with that top header (because red and blue are very contrasting colors, and it goes straight from that top border of maroonish to the blue to white sidebar color... maybe just try to stick to reds and whites there or something... and use blue elsewhere).

Like I said, the site looks great... and maybe some of those ideas can help you out (then again maybe not... all depends on your style). Good luck, and keep up the great job!

[robot180]

All of that sounded very valid. I am thinking about just starting over with the navigation bar and table of contents. I found out that blue and red actually don't contrast very well, but maroon and lighter blue do. That is why I picked the blue gradient and red links for the table of contents (left column). Someone said the forum is like staring at a piece of aluminum. The problem is that phpBB uses the same color setting for multiple classes. Each set of forums, like where it says "Public", the background of that is the same as the hyperlink color. I hate how that was done so I have to pick colors that work together and greys are the only ones.

[miketwalker]

Yea, I figured that was why you did that with phpBB. That can always be messed with later (because that involves working with the scripts and such to customize it...) If you need help with redoing the navigation bar or table of contents, I'll help ya out if you need any buttons or anything made up in photoshop or any help with layout and such. Send me a message on AIM if you need me, miketwalker86

[robot180]

Our server has been down for the past few days. I heard that the hard drive crashed. Backups are important! After it is up again, I would like to redesign the navigation bars and make several changes.

Thanks for everyone's help.

[robot180]

Last time I posted here was awhile ago. Most of you probably don't even remember this thread. Well, some coding problems, school starting, fall veteran meetings, a couple of hurricanes, a few server hard drive crashes, and one Robot Rodeo later, we finally have our website coming back to life!

We plan to redesign some of the menus to match the new S.P.A.M. logo that we have. Besides that and a few other things, we could really use more feedback. I would also like to introduce our forums (lost during one of the hard drive crashes) which is currently in beta testing. We are still working on the colors and settings for it. If you can, please give us some feedback. Thanks.

http://spamrobotics.com/

forum at http://spamrobotics.com/forums

I will put a link to the forums on the website soon.

[Kel D]

You might want to think about having thumbnails on your galleries because you have the images linked anyways and that would cut out the horizontal scrolling. Just a thought. Looks good otherwise though.