GoFundRobots.org Beta is Live

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 9:36am

First off, wow… This has been a big project but is now at a point where it is functional and decently polished to the point of feeling comfortable letting everyone try to break it.

For context this started with a different name, a limited scope and alot of hypotheticals.

biggest change: this is for ALL FIRST leagues, FRC, FTC and FLL, not just FRC as it was first laid out. Thanks to @bigbossg13 for pointing out what should have been obvious.

This new thread will be the continuation of the build log and any updates until the official launch day.

Now going into FRC Kickoff we have 11 Beta Testers that will be putting info into the system and giving it a test run.

Participating Beta Teams:

FRC 41
FRC 353
FRC 453
FRC 862
FRC 1466
FRC 1506
FRC 2170
FRC 3098
FRC 3175
FRC 8795
FTC 23383

The day before Kickoff FRC 453 has an event at Panda Express so that was our test post

https://gofundrobots.org/events.html?id=fj933SWNoADMG7BD3xbB

Every event made will have a landing page like this that has quick sharing buttons, and public event info. When you are logged in you can edit or delete your own teams posts but not anyone else’s.

Logged in Screenshot

Logged out Screenshot

All markdown features of Marked are supported and seem to work. The copy promo code button works and the date system works.

On the home page you will only see events where the end date has not passed yet and then sorted in time order for soonest. All events are still kept for historical sake and can always be accessed by the event landing page.

There is a help section in the navbar that includes alot more information.

Please feel free to try the site out, report any bugs (there’s a handy template email link if you do it from the home page) and “Share and Enjoy”

Edit: If you previously visited the site and don’t see the new features or things aren’t working try doing it in incognito mode or clearing your cache for the site. This caused some initial login issues for Beta Testers. The updates are live but your browser may not have the latest versions. If you wait a couple of days it’ll update naturally or you can force it.

bigbossg13 · December 30, 2023, 10:38am

Whoop whoop! We’re so excited to be a part of this, and can’t wait to test it to the MAX!

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 5:47pm

Had a bug due to the removal of the isOngoing checkbox in event creation. Patched this morning and tested with a new event post. Also adding a quick link for Physical and Hybrid events to a google map of the event location. Online only events will hide the dummy venue info.

https://gofundrobots.org/events.html?id=bEFOHG7wSKfVaoa1YHDQ

Hybrid

(This event is at a physical location, but you can place online orders also)

Physical

(This is at a physical location only with no online way to participate)

Online

(There is no specific location, but it has an online method for all)

IsmaelM · December 30, 2023, 6:38pm

I gotta admit this font hurts my eyes, and is a bit hard to read.

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 6:40pm

Im open to changes, thats a quick fix. That font is Share Tech Mono

If people want to leave up suggestions with google fonts replacements we can make a poll to change it. Wanna leave some time to get more input

IsmaelM · December 30, 2023, 6:48pm

I think a simple Roboto would work, or if you want to go more interesting Turret Road could work better.

OTOH, maybe its just my eyes are bad.

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 6:54pm

Screenshots of the suggested fonts

Turret Road

Roboto

Poppins

Josefin Sans

Share Tech Mono (Original)

right off the bat Roboto seems much clearer, added 2 more for comparison

leo-les · December 30, 2023, 6:57pm

I agree that the current font is a little dated, and hard to read. Going with a simpler, more modern font would help with readability.

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 7:01pm

I think if we don’t see too many more suggestions I’ll swap to Roboto around 6:00PM EST and we can see. I like it so far in my local testing

leo-les · December 30, 2023, 7:10pm

Poppins is a more smoother and spaced out option to Roboto, and a more out there font could be Josefin Sans. Not sure exactly how they’d look on your site.

JonathanL · December 30, 2023, 7:20pm

This might be too much to ask… but is there anyway this could export to a Google calendar that people could subscribe to? That way people don’t have to go check the website every day. If so, I’ll add it to our internal AndyMark calendar - since many AM staff tend to go out for lunch everyday anyways.

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 7:33pm

We will definitely investigate this, I like the idea.

Edit: found some good tutorials, it seems feasible and I’ll take a swing at this before kickoff. If I can’t invest the time the students will be able to use this as one of their first Feature updates when they are back

Even if I don’t do it directly through the website itself there are ways with Python to populate a Google calendar and I could update it daily at midnight or something similar in a worst case scenario.

This would also save on the amount of database calls needed which is always a plus.

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 7:34pm

I’ll do a test in a little bit and add it to the options reply above so it’s easier to see all 5 in one place

Edit: Updated the comparison post

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 9:11pm

Torn between Poppins and Roboto. Both are readable and spaced out wider than Josefin per each letter. That helps definitely

Edit: Went with poppins

Vasista · December 30, 2023, 9:14pm

Randomly select a font on first page load and cache it in a cookie for future accesses /s

kingc95 · December 30, 2023, 9:29pm

No no no I like this. It creates a font token that expires after 24 hours. When you get a new random font token it changes against your will. /S

Vasista · December 30, 2023, 11:05pm

Note that YouTube actually did this (for order of images on screen) while deprecating IE6 A Conspiracy To Kill IE6

kingc95 · December 31, 2023, 5:23am

Updates after Day 1 of Beta Testing:

With some more testing today we discovered the need for a few things, First some changes to clear up the font and also adding two new pages.

Font Changes

We have selected Poppins as the new font and already its much better on the eyes.

Stats Page : GoFundRobots.org - Event Statistics

This will show totals by league, event type and a grand total based on counts and people filling out the Total Raiser field after they get their event totals.

Archive Page : GoFundRobots.org - Event Archive

To keep the home page clean we only show events that the End Date has not passed yet. Any previous events suddenly dissapear and unless you saved the Event ID you’d never find it again. Hence the archive list. This is date ordered and has a link to every post made.

We have not had any major errors reported so far, so hopefully that’s good news. fingers crossed

Thank you all!

kingc95 · December 31, 2023, 7:49am

Another update

https://gofundrobots.org/guides.html

This is the home of any links and guides created to help teams find and setup fundraisers. We need help writing these guides so please apply!

Also some style updates to the stats page

kingc95 · January 4, 2024, 5:00pm

Testing some changes to how the site is rendering. The current live one at GoFundRobots.org is raw HTML, CSS and JS. It works but is messy.

There is a newer version being rebuilt with EJS to reduce the amount of updates needed and to better reuse code. We can also do much more server side this way and save on client side scripts.

If you want to play around with that version it’s live at https://gofundrobots.web.app/

I populated 10,000 dummy FRC events using team data from The Blue Alliance. This seemed like a good stress test for most of the core statistics and other features. There is no login or posting functions enabled. So sort of a read only preview of what’s coming up next.