Website Judging Misinformation

[zim2411]

I skimmed around this forum, and there's a lot of incorrect information regarding when and how websites are judged.

1. There are no 'snapshots' of the site that take place at the submission deadline. The sites are judged live.
2. Since there is no snapshot, you should submit the URL to your site as early as you can. There's no point in waiting and accidentally missing the deadline.
3. A bare minimum of 3 evaluations per site are required, ideally 5+.
4. The main evaluations usually take place 2-3 weeks before the regional. (But can start as early as the URL submission deadline) The absolute deadline for evaluations is the Monday night of the week of the regional.
5. Judges may evaluate at any time in this time window. They may perform a main evaluation a week or two out, and in the last day or two skim the site and see if anything major has changed.
6. The evaluations are not set in stone until midnight on Monday night. (This may differ on some regionals that are offset, not sure)

That being said, here are some do's and don'ts:

• Do NOT count on your website being graded as late as possible.
• Do NOT make huge, major changes to your site in the last possible days. (Don't do a major relaunch or something like that) Chances are, judges have already looked at your site earlier, and will not appreciate the increased work.
• Do update your site with content. If you attended an early regional, absolutely post your results
• Do make sure broken links are fixed, and that the site works well

I hope this helps clear up some of the (incorrect) rumors that have been posted in some of the threads. Let me know if you have questions (here or in PM if you want).

[Dustin Shadbolt]

Thanks Zim

[RyanN]

Our website had an unexpected shutdown for 2 days (Monday and Tuesday this week) when the school did unannounced upgrades to their servers, killing our website. I just hope that we weren't judged during that time.

[zim2411]

Originally Posted by RyanN

Our website had an unexpected shutdown for 2 days (Monday and Tuesday this week) when the school did unannounced upgrades to their servers, killing our website. I just hope that we weren't judged during that time.

The rules say any site that is down during evaluation should be disqualified immediately. It depends on the advisor and evaluator though. Some may stick to this rule, some might be nice enough to check in again later.

[codedr]

Some tips when looking at your website:
- Do all the links work ?
- Are the news items recent ? I look for dates on the news items.
- If you have a pictures of an activity or event, tell something about the picture. The person viewing it may not understand why it's important. Who, what, where and why?
- Reduce the overall size of the pictures you post, but optionally allow to click on the pictures to get them full sized. This will make the pages load faster.
- How does it the site look to Mom, Dad, Aunt, Uncles or Grandma? If I didn't know anything about FIRST, what would I learn by viewing your team site?
- Have someone who doesn't know about your team look at your site and get feedback.