A new way to browse the FIRST website

[Pat Fairbank]

Ever been frustrated by the number of clicks it takes to navigate to a team's info page on the FIRST website? Or ever wanted to go directly to the Team Updates page but forgot that the URL is "http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=450"? I sure have, especially when browsing on a mobile device (try typing "https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso?page=teamlist&menu=false&year=2008&eve nt_type=FRC" using the iPhone keyboard).

So, I spent a couple of hours one gloomy evening coding up a solution (okay, okay, it was a sunny afternoon, and I was trying to avoid doing schoolwork), and shelled out nine bucks for a domain.

Usage instructions: frclinks.com +

/t/[team number]
/team/[team number]
Go to the FIRST information page for the given team.

/w/[team number]
/website/[team number]
Go to the website of the given team.

/t
/team
Go to the list of all registered FRC teams.

/e/[event id]
/event/[event id]
Go to the team list for the given event ID (e.g. il, ny, wat).

/r
/regionals
Go to the Regional Events page.

/c
/championship
Go to the Championship Event page.

/d
/documents
Go to the Competition Manual page.

/u
/updates
Go to the Team Updates page.

/b
/blog
Go to Bill's Blog.

So, for example, http://frclinks.com/r would instantly redirect me to FIRST's Regional Events page, while http://frclinks.com/w/47 would redirect me to a site that is strangely familiar.

This is all done using Google App Engine, an awesome, free platform that lets you easily develop web applications (using Python) and host them on Google's infrastructure (I can't recommend it enough if you're into building web apps). I'm releasing the code under the BSD open-source license; you can get it here.

I'm sure I'm missing some useful links; let me know if you have any suggestions for additional shortcuts or general feedback.