Team website

[livevampyric]

i need help with what to put in our team website I'm the webmaster and its our first year trying a website could u look at it and try to give suggestions. It was just recently stared. http://www.whs96797robotic.com

[RyanCahoon]

Try checking out some other teams' websites for ideas. FIRST keeps a list of good team websites to give you some inspiration.

--Ryan

[Zholl]

this is more a matter of preference for me, but your site is really busy. I find that all the moving and flashing things distract from the content of your site. also, I'd recommend using full HTML instead of Flash, just because it makes your site more available to people. I'm not saying you can't use flash, I've seen some pretty well made sites done in flash, but with Apple's decision that you can't have it on your iPhone or your iPad, it cuts that entire part of your viewership out

[onecoolc]

Please take everything in this message as a matter of opinion and constructive criticism, I don't mean to insult in any way.

I very much like your background, navigation bar, and top header. Keeping them the way they are sounds good to me.

Zholl is right, the site is rather busy, It's hard to tell where to look first.

I believe it's rather unnecessary to have two rolls of moving pictures, and that you could probably remove one of them.

The font you've used for the sticky notes is busy and hard to read. I would suggest going with Helvetica, Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman for the majority of your text. I know they're boring, but they are also tried and true.

The pirate ship/island banner seems unnecessary and repetitive. If you could put "Waipaho High School Engineers Club and Robotics Team" in the other banner I believe it would simplify your lay out greatly.

I do like the sticky note idea, and it makes it obvious they are important tidbits of information. If you could move those to the top of the page (perhaps instead of the ship/island banner?) it would call attention to them without making them appear randomly placed.

I believe the scrolling box of text should be the focal point of the page, as that is where the majority of your information is, so that should be the largest item. I would suggest making it reach from one side of the page to the other underneath the stick notes, as this would make it an obvious point to start.

As backwards as this is going to sound, Less is More.
Go for minimalist and less flashy. Keep pictures and graphics, but in moderation. Fewer animated objects makes the page easier to read, less distracting, and faster loading.

More in the world of clutter removal-
*I do not understand the point of the swirling orange thing in the center of the home page? It seems kind of distracting.
*the floating bubbles and twirling stars on the officers page seem out of place. Again, a different text would be better suited. The one you used for the title is very hard to read.
*the different color scheme on the Micro Robots page looks weird, either link to a page that is COMPLETELY different (minus the purple-and-gray thing you've got going on, which I like) or have the page mesh better with it's surroundings.
*I believe the animated background on the Micro Robots page is not necessary, although that seems to be more a matter of preference
*The animated banner on the VEX page seems to serve no real purpose, if you were to create it as regular text I think you would be fine.
*The layout on the VEX page seems cluttered. If you could down-size the images and make the text the focal point of the page, as well as receive a little bit more text for content, I think it would do you a world of good.
*Again on the FRC page, I believe you would be best to conform to the gray-and-purple color scheme
*The large number of animated objects on the FRC page (including the discoing panda) is distracting

Again, please, please don't take any of this personally. I'm in my third year of Web Design studies, and I am merely dissecting your page with the object of helping you.


*Edited for some grammar fail, as I posted this yesterday with two minutes untill the end of the period.*

[Garret]

I run an online store/website for my school's Virtual Enterprise program
www.adventureoutdoorscompany.com

In regards to your website my suggestions would be:

In general I believe it is good practice to keep a website as simple as possible but no simpler. Focus on keeping text readable (font, color, and size), use correct spelling, proper grammer (where necessary), and easy to use.

I like that you have so many things on the navigation bar thing but you might want to group some of them into more general categories so that you limit it to only one line. You could also try moving some of them to a menu on the side.

All of the little animation things are cool but they are also distracting so you might want to try and get rid of a few. Also I not sure if they are related to your team or not but in general it is good practice to keep the website free of content that is unrelated to the organization.

If I were you I would change to a simpler font mainly because it is hard to read but also it seems somewhat unprofessional (at least to me). I do like the contrast between the text and background; I am red-green colorblind and get really frustrated when people use font colors that blend into the background.

Your main page should focus on describing your team (e.g mission statement, news, ...) and you should try to keep it as clutter free as possible.

On your main page I would suggest moving the pictures to the side of the page or to a different category all together as they distract from the text.

I like the sticky notes but I would suggest moving those to a different location on the page and making them somewhat smaller.

I like the animated backgrounds but they really make the site seem unprofessional so I would recommend changing to a plainer or more relavent background. Also backgrounds should be consistent throughout the site.

Each page of the site needs to have a specific purpose which is the main visual focus of the page, in general this means the text (or other medium) needs to be the thing that catches people's eye first.

I would try to make your team name bigger and more prominent. You might want to use a more relevant backround for that as well (I don't know if that is robotics/team related).

I really like that your site has a video section, photo gallery , calendar, Team Updates (your sticky notes), Resources, and forum ; these add so much useful functionality to your site. I wish my teams site had all those.

If possible try to hide or get rid of the Wix ad on the pages. If it is required as some sort of thing to give credit to the Wix "company" then leave it but otherwise try to get rid of it.

If you don't already have it I would add a sponsors section to your site.

Overall I like the content and functionality a lot, but I really would suggest trying to make it more professional.

I don't use wix to create websites so I don't know how implementable/applicable my suggestions are.

I am sorry I sound critical. Most of my suggestions are either from the Virtual Enterprise TradeFair Web competion rubric or are comments I recieved from judges. I do not know how first websites are scored but these suggestions helped the AdventureOutdoorsCompany website win best website/store at trade fair and a local competion against small businesses.

-Garret Smalley
VP IT/Webmaster
Adventure Outdoors Company

Edit:
I use Joomla to make the Virtual Enterprise website. Joomla like Wix is free but does not create flash websites.
Flash websites are not always usable because some computers (like the my school's) don't already have flash player.
Also why do you have a webstore?

[Ed Law]

I agree with all the things that others have said so far. Wow, they must have spent an hour typing those comments.

I was a volunteer judge for the website award for one of the competition events. My team also decided to go all out to win the Best Website award because that is the only award we would have a chance to win comparing to the other ones. We spent a lot of time reading the judging criteria and looking at all the websites of recent regional/district Best Website Award winners. We analyzed the common traits of good websites and unique things that probably stood out to judges. You are welcome to take a look at our website at www.team2834.com. It is not perfect because I left it to the student webmaster how she wanted to present it. Engineers do not tell artists what to do.

I just want to give some general feedback. A good website requires three elements like a three-legged stool. It needs to be balanced. It requires technical, organizational and artistic skills. I am very impressed with your technical skills, perhaps you were trying to showcase too much of it. Organizational refers to how the site is organized, where do you put the information and is it relevant. Artistic is just that, a webpage is a piece of art. Our webmaster labors through each page to make the picture the perfect size, location relative to the text and focal points when the page is first loaded. It is like a painting.

I know some people are going to disagree with me on this. I found a lot of the good websites have a single webmaster or a main person who makes the decision with others helping. I don't know of any famous artwork that is done by more than one person. Consistency is very important. The font, layout, color scheme and theme have to be consistent. When I was judging teams' websites, I can tell which ones are done by one main person and which ones are done by separate students who did not talk to each other.

It really depends on your objective whether you are trying to do well in the website competition or just try to learn as much technical stuff as possible. I hope this helps.

[aechmtwash11]

From what I can tell, it looks like you are using a free website company and are using some site generator program.

Purchasing you own web space can work wonders. A lot of times this allows you to post more info and multimedia content. In my team's case we use it as not only a place for the public to find out about our team but a vital resource for our communications and file storage. Hostmonster.com is a great place to get some web space, last i checked it was about 5.95 per/month for unlimited space .


Also, check out w3schools.com and custom code a site. Auto builders at times can be good options but they do severely limit your imagination and at times do not allow for the individuality that many FIRST teams require.


Just my thoughts, BEST of Luck!
Austin
kyeot.com

[Siri]

Originally Posted by aechmtwash11

Purchasing you own web space can work wonders. A lot of times this allows you to post more info and multimedia content. In my team's case we use it as not only a place for the public to find out about our team but a vital resource for our communications and file storage. Hostmonster.com is a great place to get some web space, last i checked it was about 5.95 per/month for unlimited space...

That's seems plenty cheap, but if you wanted to you could consider pursuing sponsorship from a web hosting company. We did that for a few years.

I'll echo the lessen the clutter/increase the continuity suggestions, but your content is quite good.

[WebTeam]

Originally Posted by Siri

That's seems plenty cheap, but if you wanted to you could consider pursuing sponsorship from a web hosting company. We did that for a few years.

I'll echo the lessen the clutter/increase the continuity suggestions, but your content is quite good.

I am the student webmaster for Team573.com
If you need server space and your own url, I also own a website hosting business and I can donate hosting and domain registration to your team if you would like.

Anyway keep the navigation simple and have content organized well. We received the comments from the judges regarding our website, most were really positive except one that found it difficult to find our resources for other teams to use. I made the mistake of having the resources for other teams in the side bars of pages I thought the Robotics teams would travel to the most like our robot build pages and what events we were in pages.

[Dragon Princess]

Make sure to keep it simple and easily accessed.

Try not to use too many marquees or 'distracting' things. It's easy to load up a website with too many distractions.

A very important thing is to ALWAYS check spelling and grammar before posting up on a website.

And just as advice, make sure you always save changes and back up old files, if not then when you make a mistake you have to grieve over it for a long time, and it gets very upsetting.

Try to upload frequently and don't let the web page expire, my team did a couple years ago, and it took a lot to restart over.

[Zholl]

Originally Posted by Dragon Princess

And just as advice, make sure you always save changes and back up old files, if not then when you make a mistake you have to grieve over it for a long time, and it gets very upsetting.

YES!! we were unfortunate enough to get our site hacked this year (I don't understand why someone would hack a non-profit robotics team either), and half our site would have been hosed if we didn't have various backups. even if it's just a local copy of the site that you work on for edits (ala Dreamweaver, etc), make sure you follow this bit of advice

[livevampyric]

thank you for the help and advice i appreciate it you guys are the best I'll keep in mind to keep it simple