Changes to the FIRST Website

[ATannahill]

TBA and frclinks take notice.

FIRST has updated the view of team pages for example, https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index....A582wGkw34A606 , also notice the change of url, making links on TBA and frclinks.com obsolete.

This also comes with a new look for the regional list and an improved what's going on.

[Rick TYler]

Web stie? Isn't that spelled "sty"?

[Madison]

Fixed

[Pat Fairbank]

Gah. Looks like I've got some work to do.

[Joe G.]

Am I the only one who is deeply intrigued by the necessity to add an "Event Subtype" category to the regional list? It strikes me that this could be a sign of an expansion of the district system.

[BandChick]

Too bad some of the subpages are still terrible design. XD

[lynca]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

making links on TBA and frclinks.com obsolete.

Most website designers carefully consider backward-compatibility to support people who collect data of your site to increase web traffic. I hope FIRST web design can at least put up a link to the old interface.

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

This also comes with a new look for the regional list and an improved what's going on.

I feel like I'm clicking way too much to find information. I like how the FTC, FLL and FRC are all easily searchable now but I don't feel like searching for an FTC team and FRC team on one page.

It seems to me FIRST web design needs to look at TBA or Google's one box search solution.
Put your team #, regional or other info in one search box.
Google Adsense has everything built in for searching and FIRST could
make money of the advertisements (and help reduce team registration fees! ) .


NO MAPS ?
There is no Google Map on the new interface ? (or maybe I can't find it)

[Francis-134]

In other news it seems that the data here only goes back to 2001, instead of 1998 with partial data back till 1992.

Seems rather unfortunate.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by BandChick

Too bad some of the subpages are still terrible design. XD

You should totally have them hire you

[rsisk]

Wonder if they are going to change the pages that show match scores, awards, etc during the competitions?

Us screen scrapers would like to know, otherwise it will be a scramble on week 1. Now, if they were to make them all consistent in construction, that would be a blessing

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by lynca

Most website designers carefully consider backward-compatibility to support people who collect data of your site to increase web traffic. I hope FIRST web design can at least put up a link to the old interface.

Well, as of now, frclinks.com is broken, which sucks. I, too, hope that FIRST can at least forward all of the old-style links to the new ones.

[artdutra04]

It looks like FIRST just switched from direct team numbers to an internal database ID to find teams and the like. As far as I can tell, the -section:myarea parameter has no effect on the webpage, with the tpid= parameter being the actual team number.

As long as we could literally do a scrape of the website, and log down which internal ID numbers correspond to which team (for example FIRST's tpid 20863 is Team 228), then frclinks.com and TBA could just use a giant lookup table to redirect requests.

The only plus side is that the aesthetically data on FIRST's website is now better formatted.

[JaneYoung]

I'm sure they (the web folks at FIRST) are continuing to work on the website. Before we become too critical in our analytical ways - let's remember that this is their time to work and to make improvements. If anyone does have valid suggestions and concerns, I would suggest that you contact FIRST directly - otherwise, it is just nattering.

[ATannahill]

According to Bill's blog the FIRST website is about to get a facelift. Changes will go live the week of August 24th. Check out our new navigation and upgraded mentor resources (plus new video and more pictures).

[Pat Fairbank]

frclinks.com has now been fixed. All the links work the same as before the FIRST website facelift.