Website award help

[eternalearth888]

Dear readers,

I ask for your help.

I am a senior on my robotics team and have been the webmaster all four years.

This year, I really badly want to win the award, and my team and I feel like I have come along way in my skills as a webmaster.

Every year I seem to barely be out of reach of the award, or even the website excellence award.

My team is Monarch High School Shazbots 1245 - our website is:

http://www.shazbots.org

What I ask?
I ask that you please look over the website, I know there are a quite a few kinks and I am working on those, but please, feel free to critique everything and anything you want. I will be more than happy to hear it if it helps to improve the website or even if it doesn't!

I thank you for your time, patience, and cooperation.

Feel free to chat with me as well.

Sincerely,
Maria Deslis

P.S. Feel free to email me as well @ eternalearth888@aol.com

[GaryVoshol]

You know what, Maria? With no intent to offend, if you've identified some kinks that you are working out, you should fix those first before asking us to spend our time critiquing. I wouldn't want to spend my time pointing out formats, spelling, grammar, etc that you already know about. Let us know when you have the site near-ready.

[waialua359]

Maria,
Our team is willing to help. However, we are not quote "Web experts." But, our team has had some success in winning website awards in 2007 and 2008.
Since your not accepting private messages in your account, you can check out our site at www.waialuarobotics.com and email your questions from our contact info.
We were basically told why we won the excellence and best website awards from judges each year.

[XD_bring_it]

I think your website isn't that bad. You could always check the criteria for the award again and modify your website according to that. http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedfiles...erm s=website award&SearchType=AndWords
Feel free to check out our website www.mvrt.com. We had the best website in the nation and in two regionals last year (with the trophies to prove it).

[David Brinza]

"Scouting" other successful FRC team websites is certainly worthwhile.

Your team has a great history and story to tell. You've got excellent material to work into your website.

Winning the website awards involves "packaging" your content in a way that encourages viewers to dig into your site.

Look at Team 16's "Bomb Squad" site (two-time winner last year). They've structured the website so it's easy to navigate, offers interesting current news, team history, FIRST description, etc. They created a balance of stories, photos, graphics, history, links, in a visually appealing format.

Of course, you must avoid format, grammatical or spelling errors since those are major distractions to viewers.

I think you just need to do some polishing of your format to move it from a B+ to an A+.

[DCA Fan]

I would recommend going over the website award criteria and making sure that you meet all of them. Also, you may consider sending the website to someone unfamiliar with the team and see how easy it is for them to find certain pieces of information.

[mahmosh]

it's not bad ... i realy liked it ...
i just have comments :
1) i think the logo is simple one .. DONT USE WHITE COLOR to write your logo.. use dark colors or make shadow to the fonts... and write the first vision on the logo : FOR INSPIRATION AND RECOGNITION ......
2) there is some problems on pages try to solve it.
3) go to the website award pdf ... and read it ... there you can find what ur website should be to win the award ...

i hope that could help you ... i am realy working on our site ..becuase that i am not ready to help u for this time ... if u have something write it here or relpay by a message...

[eternalearth888]

Thank you so much for everything so far! I am definitley looking this all over and figuring out what is best for the site.

I love all the comments and critiques so far and I look forward to anymore that I may be getting!

Thank you all again!

[eternalearth888]

Alright, as far as the website goes, I believe I have figured things out.

Please wish me luck! It's my senior year and all I've ever wanted is to win one award for the site! Thank you so much for all your help and critiques, they all helped!
Check out the site at http://www.shazbots.org

I wish everyone else the best of luck as well!

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by eternalearth888

Alright, as far as the website goes, I believe I have figured things out.

Please wish me luck! It's my senior year and all I've ever wanted is to win one award for the site! Thank you so much for all your help and critiques, they all helped!
Check out the site at http://www.shazbots.org

I wish everyone else the best of luck as well!

Best of luck! I feel very fortunate enough to have won 2 best websites in my first year.

[rsisk]

You can pick up a few easy points by fixing the First logo on your home page. Go to the First website and find the rules regarding the display of the logo.

[GaryVoshol]

A very nice site. Everything I tried works, and I didn't see any typos.

I agree with the reply above, you need to be aware of the FIRST logo standards: http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedfiles...hType=AndWords