Thoughts, Opinions, Comments

[synth3tk]

I know I just had another thread here, but that one focused only on the color scheme. Probably would've been wise to make it general.

Anyway, I've been frantically working on the site for the last 2 weeks. I'd appreciate any comments, negative or positive, on any part of the site. Keep in mind, some parts are still incomplete, but that's why I'd like the help now.
Get it out of the way before the season starts.

http://team964.dyndns.org/

[Cyberphil]

Very nice website. I like the title design, like the windows vista or mac os background. The Calendar is great. Very interesting, and big enough to see. And i think the download page is a great idea. But im just wondering what kind of things will you put in there? Like videos, or Lab view upgrades. Just make sure you're allowed to put the items up that you are posting for public downloading. But over all, looks like its gonna be a great site! Good job.

[synth3tk]

About the downloads, that was more to see what it actually looked like than for functionality. I don't think we intend to upload anything significant, so most likely it'll be removed. Any programming code, etc, will be uploaded to the project management area, which was just installed tonight.

[Andy L]

Very good site. Pretty much flawless, the red box for under construction doesn't really fit in but other than that really god.

I'd also like to point out that I read something about having the FIRST logo with no white background not being legal or something along the lines of that.

Very good site though

[rsisk]

Very nice.

I don't understand why you have two navigation menus, the horizontal one on top and the vertical one on the right.

86 the Under Construction banners

How did you like working with Joomla?

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Andy L

Very good site. Pretty much flawless, the red box for under construction doesn't really fit in but other than that really god.

Yeah, those were placed to mark the areas I were working on the night before. My memory, despite me being young, isn't as good as it should be. But yeah, I'll probably take those out ASAP.

Originally Posted by Andy L

I'd also like to point out that I read something about having the FIRST logo with no white background not being legal or something along the lines of that.

I used the one from their site that had the black background, so I assumed it was alright. I'll read up on that in the morning...

Originally Posted by rsisk

Very nice.

I don't understand why you have two navigation menus, the horizontal one on top and the vertical one on the right.

I don't quite know, really. I started off just using the top menu, then after I realized how many links I'd need, I switched to the sidebar. I'm still not sure how navigation will work out. Maybe have one or two links up top, with the rest on the side. What's your suggestion?

Originally Posted by rsisk

How did you like working with Joomla?

I love it. It's very simple, yet extremely flexible, right out of the box. Support is everywhere, more extensions/modules than you can count, and very professional-looking (if you know how to work with it).

[Cow Bell Solo]

A couple things that I can think of...

The FIRST Logo that you got from the website, (it is not fully the original copy, as in the registered thingy is not there along with that you edited the "FIRST" out of the image, that is still part of the image in my opinion.

The contact page, I would suggest having only a couple emails, like a webmaster one, a general team one (that gets sent to like the captains and mentors and they can then distribute info). I would do that instead of, and this is assuming, everyone on the team or who signs up will get thier information exposed to everyone. I might suggest having the couple of emails like I said above and then those that are registered on your site can then see everyones contact information.

If you are going to have the navigation on the side AND the top, have the side one on EVERY page as it makes the site uninviting if you have to keep visiting the home page to click on those links in my opinion.

Also not everyone has Firefox, I prefere Firefox myself but it is also good to have it work in explorer and safari too. You never know(if submitting for website design) what browser that they may use to judge. When I viewed it in explorer on the team page the little gray background saying that this site was designed for firefox thing was not at the bottom of the page. Just another thought of food.

I might also suggest having your own page describing FIRST, not just for those that don't like browsing external links but also for the website design awards, that is one thing that they look for and judge on.

Currently this is all I can think of for now. Sorry if I may seem a little to over critism, this is stuff that I like to look for when I ask people to check our site. I do like the site, the color scheme is very inviting. I really like it.

[synth3tk]

No, that's cool. Like I said, it's better that I get it set straight while it's still being born. I can take constructive criticism.

Are you using IE6? If so, can I get a screenshot of a few areas of the site? The issues came from a lot of the coding in the modules, worked much better with FF than IE. The biggest culprit, though, has been uninstalled, so I might consider taking out the footer.

The navigation is up in the air. The problem is, some of the integrated software (forums, photo gallery, etc) don't display correctly with the side-modules enabled. I'd like to move just about everything to the side, and keep maybe "Home" and "FIRST" up there. My guess is I'll probably have to go in and edit the themes of the gallery and forums to make them play nice inside of Joomla.

The logo on the menu, I guess I need to take out, then. And I think what I'll do is make it a link to our own page describing FIRST, with a link to the external site from there.

Again, thanks for the words of advice. By the way, you need to edit your signature. Your team's website is including the ")" at the end.

[synth3tk]

Oh, for the contacts page, that will only be important contact emails/phone. Mentor, webmaster (me!), financial/technical contact, etc. I never planned on everybody's information being posted, and Joomla! helps to organize it very well.

I like the idea of a general address to forward to the core group.

[Cow Bell Solo]

Thanks for the signature edit

I don't remeber what version it was since that was on schools computer and they have many different versions I don't remember which one that one was(I had the laptop out and was using that so I don't really remember).

And kind of like I somewhat mentioned in the last post about website award, I would look at last years requirements (in the manual Section 5 which is the awards section and I think it is around page 10-13, scary if that is true as that is a guess) as the requirements mention what they will look for on the website.

[synth3tk]

Ok, I've been toying around with the photo gallery today, so now I put the side-menu on every page, and removed all but three links up top, and may change that to two, or even remove it completely.

I've also created our own FIRST page, which has yet to be filled with content. I'm leaving that for another, more qualified, member.

Working on tweaking the themes of the calendar and forums. Still need to finish filling in content throughout the site, including the frontpage. Otherwise, I'm fairly satisfied with this project. This is the first website I ever made that actually came out pretty nice.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

I don't quite know, really. I started off just using the top menu, then after I realized how many links I'd need, I switched to the sidebar. I'm still not sure how navigation will work out. Maybe have one or two links up top, with the rest on the side. What's your suggestion?

I would just use a single navigation menu, I prefer to have them on the side although I usually put it on the left hand side of the page. Not sure that there is any advantage to it being on the left. My mantra as a designer is to be simple and consistent. Users should not have to think unecessarily, such as trying to figure out which menu to use to do what they want.

[synth3tk]

About it being on the right, I read somewhere that since readers read from left-to-right, the most important content (the main) should go on the left. I'm not sure whether that's a huge deal or not, but I figured it can't hurt. It can always be move back to the left side, but I kind of like it there.

As for the top menu, I'm convinced to completely remove it. There's really no reason for it to be up there any more.

EDIT: I just happened to be browsing through websites, and realized how similar I had created our site to the Adambots'. Coincidence? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. http://www.adambots.com/

[Cow Bell Solo]

I would personally if putting links on the side I would place them on the left hand side as many people look for menus on the top or the left hand side since that is what most websites place the menus. A menu could be considered as important content as that can link to other pages on a site.

[synth3tk]

After extensive research, studying, polling, trying, crying, and bribing, I've set my pride aside and moved the menus to the left.