How do you Run your WebTeams?

[mpking]

Another FIRST Season is Upon us, and I've trying to figure out how to Run our Web Team once again.

This is the fourth Year in a row for me, The first two years was Me doing it by myself. I graduated, and now we are trying to have a group of people run the webpage.

I ran it last year, and though we did it well enought, I didn't really feel like I ran it the best way.

I want them to be able to do the entire webpage themselve's.
However, for most of the students, the only training they will have is what I will give them.


How do some of the other teams run there sites?

[David Kelly]

i'm the one who runs our website. http://www.geocities.com/cbteam234 i'm involved in pretty much everything on my team so it doens't bother me. i like doing it myself.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Trying to do a webpage as a team or committee is a great idea that doesn't really work. The main problem is that most people don't know what to do, and you end up coding over their shoulder, which defeats the purpose of involving others. Designs can be made in committee, but the actual coding should be left to two or three people who know what they are doing. For a simple site, one coder could be plenty.

[Jay Lundy]

Here's my view, as the webmaster of team 254's page (http://dagnabit.org/~krazikamikaze/newrobot):

The layout can be done by any amount of people, depends on how many are on the web page subteam.

The graphics can be done by whoever's good with graphics, just assign them a graphic to make and have them make it. The only problem I can see with this would be if you are designing a graphical interface for your website that has to fit together perfectly (for example, our website). There must be about 20 images that make up our website's border, some of which are as small as 100 bytes. This should be done by either one person, or two people working on the same computer. That way when the layout person finds that he/she needs another image to make the layout look right, they can have the graphics person do it, or just do it themselves.

The HTML coding can be done by several people (who know how to do it, of course). Each person can work on a seperate page, just make sure that each one understands the layout and knows what template they should follow.

The other coding (perl, php, asp, jsp, etc.) should be by 1 or 2 people. The problem with having many people working on this is it is hard to understand another person code because it is usually very complex. It is best if only 1 or 2 really good coders work on that part.

[A. Leese]

I'm the one in charge of my team's site. It's my first year and it's always fun b/c I don't know much at all about making sites. We have a team that is supposed to work together to do the site (amongst other things) but none of the people know how to make sites. Asking for suggestions from team members is always a good idea (and be sure not to just ask for comments b/c you'll get lots of "I hate the site" and "it needs to be better").

~Angela

To all you SPAM people out there (or anyone else, for that matter): check out the site and let me know of any suggestions you have. All those who know me know I need all the help I can get. Thanks a ton! http://www.spamrobotics.com or http://team180.tripod.com

[tjrage_25]

I'm the one who runs our site (http://www.raiderrobotix.com )

I have not tried runing our site in a team, basically because reading 4 or 5 different sets of code, and then try to standardize them for easier updating would be a nightmare.

Since I started as a Freshman and slowly learned the tools and tricks of the trade. What I would suggest doing is training one member of your team (if possible a Freshman), and train them on eveything you know about web-design and programming.

Or you could train anyone interested in web-design and let them make what they want to see the page look like (either in teams or alone). Then have the whole club vote on what they have created, and pick that group or individual with the best page to run the page. This way if you choose a group, you get a group that works well together and knows what they are doing.

[GregT]

My team's website was written by me and patrick. The idea behind our beast was to design it in such a way that day to day updates require no html editing. Everything that will need to be updated during the building season can be done through a password protected web form. This way we can assign certain update jobs to different people (though my bet is we are going to be doing it ourselfs). This takes a while to program, but will end up saving us time in the long run.

www.startateam.com/639

Greg