Hi there! As the title suggests, I was wondering how you came to do webpage design for your team. I am on a mission this year to recruit for our team, hopefully finding people for new subteams. I feel like our website could be so so so much better, but we would need a new member(s) to do this. No one currently on the team has expressed any interest in it’s upkeep. I’ve seen schedules with upcoming events and times and even food-bringing schedules on other teams’ sites! So basically, I would love to know how you came to this so I can know how to find new team members that may be interested in improving our website. Or if you just have tips on recruiting in general, that would help too. Thank you very much.
–Celia
Hey, welcome to CD! I love the Hank Green quote.
I came to be on the website team out of equal parts boredom and interest. I had some pretty strong ideas about what we could do with the site, and I had four hours of summer school to sit through every morning (AKA website editing time)! So I’m a strange case, but I think a good place to start is to see if anyone on your team has experience in HTML or CSS (I don’t, but now I realize how useful that would be). Does anyone know a lot about your team history? Helps organize the team? Reaches out to sponsors? If no one is just interested, you could call on these people to help make your website useful and beautiful. They all have something to give or gain from a good site.
And if that doesn’t work, make the freshmen do it. 
As far as general recruiting, I’m not really in a position to give advice until I see if our strategy this year worked. I’m crossing my fingers…
-Graccie
Thank you! As of now, we have no freshman =( My school has one web page design class, so I was thinking of talking to the teacher to see if he had any students that really liked it. All of us know about our team history luckily, but I don’t believe our team captain has any interest in doing the site. Maybe I’ll make a survey about the site for the team… I appreciate the help and by the way, I like your team name!
Its really nice to see the integration of various important elements in your website! I especially like the calendar’s presence on the home page. Just a few questions.
- Is the home page the only page of your website? If not, it isn’t really clear. Just something to think about.
- Have you thought about shortening the details on the home page? This is the first page that any visitor will see on your website, and the information that is on that website is rather detailed on topics that could be covered on other pages.
Just a few comments to help you improve =)
Good Luck!
We’ll find out sometime in September whether we managed to convince anyone to join the team… I’m worried we scared them off 
we really need freshmen.
Perhaps you could get the web design teacher to make it a class project? Did you build your site from scratch or are you using something like Wordpress?
Good luck getting people involved, and if there’s anything I can help you with let me know!
I started doing web design/development in 6th grade after learning to make a website for a gaming group. At the same time, I was active on the Neowin tech forum where there is a graphics/media user marketplace and exchange. So, as a youngster I got excited about the prospect of making a buck or two :P.
From there it was just a big snowball effect. By the time I was in 8th grade I was fairly good at what I was doing and my brother was on the robotics team. They needed to their website updated and reached out to me. Throughout my time on the team, I redesigned/revamped our website several times until it became what it is today.
In high school, I managed websites attracting 50,000 different people and 300,000+ page views (and that’s small) from around the world. Additionally, while my friends were flipping burgers and waiting tables, I was sitting at home making more than at least twice their hourly wage doing web/graphic design for local businesses and organizations :).
So, if the prospect of learning something new and exciting isn’t attracting anyone, consider showing them the possibilities of what someone can do once they attain these skills. My story dwarfs in comparison to some industry successes (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
Thank you very much for the feedback! If/when someone wants to “take care” of it, we will definitely work on making it easier to navigate. I don’t think anyone really controls the website on our team, so our calendar never has anything on it. It’s just kind of abandoned.
- We also have a team photo/video page (most recently updated page) and a documents page. They’re linked at the very top.
- I know all the details seem very intimidating =) The website isn’t exactly marketed towards non-team-240 members right now… It’s mostly for freshman to read up on team history, but I wish it wouldn’t scare people off.
–Celia
The teacher used to be involved with the team, so that may be a possibility. That would be a fun way for people to get a preview of part of robotics!
As for the site, I have no idea. I’d assume we don’t do it from scratch, as each teacher/group controls their own page. So that would make it easier for a beginner to start, right? Thanks!
–Celia
That is an awesome story. I couldn’t imagine doing something that big.
On another side of things, my team was next to yours in the pits at states this year. We taped one of your rubber ducks to our robot’s shooter XD
When I first joined my robotics team, they wanted me to do website design because I had experience with HTML and javascript, but I got really offended that they didn’t even bother asking me what I wanted to do (programming), so for the first half of the year, I stayed as far away from web design as possible. However, towards the second half of the year, when our sole non engineering member quit, we still had no website. In the middle of build season, I was unable to go to meetings for two weeks, but I still wanted to contribute, and the only way I could do so was through making our team a website.
Morale of the story? Just because someone has experience with web design (or anything else for that matter), don’t assume that’s what they want to do in robotics. (Sorry, not very helpful, I know)
One thing that we’re doing this year is that we’re joining forces with FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) because they’re a really big group and some of them have expressed interest in starting an online business. I think we’re supposed to be getting a couple of them to help me with the website this year.
Thank you for the moral. Getting people interested in other aspects is something we need, too, as a third of our team graduated last school year. Web page just seems like a good way to this, even if they end up doing build or something.
That’s pretty cool that the FBLA are helping you out! It would be fun to team up with a group like that. So now, do you enjoy doing the website or would you rather be solely a programmer?
–Celia
Hmm, about to get all nestalgic…
I had always been a creative type, and loved business concepts, however when I was in high school, my robotics team had just started. They didnt do half bad (winning rookie all-star at worlds) but because of how “proud” they were they didnt have the best reputation at first with the entire student body. But in truth I think the rest of us were just jealous.
Either way, the team wanted to turn their workspace into a home and so they asked me a member of the art class to paint a mural of their logo on the wall. At first I thought the logo was really bad, but I painted it anyways. It turned out that the wall that the mural was on, was directly overlooking the computers that the web team used.
Being the opinionated little brat that I was my junior year of high school, I analyzed their work, and started a conversation with them. I thought I could do better, though I lacked the coding experience. I joined the team the following year as the co-webmaster. I managed all of the content and graphics and another student did all the coding.
We became really good friends, and ultimately with my joining the team, the entire team attitude changed and became more accepting of everyone in the school, not just the hard core nerds.
The team is now really popular, and recruits students both in and outside of the engineering classes. I now serve as a mentor for the team, responsible for the entire business and web team. And, I am more than just a creative-art-type. I actually graduated from college in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, and am a civilian engineer for the Navy now.
I guess the advice that comes out of my story is that rather than trying to simply recruit students already interested in engineering to go work on the website, you should try to focus your efforts on those non-engineering students in your school, who like art, and are creative. They might even find in the process that they like engineering…which is the ultimate goal of FIRST anyways.
(maybe ask them to paint you a mural, and in the process show them how fun FIRST is.)
The website I did solely at home, so it wasn’t too bad. I don’t mind doing the website, but since I made it, I would want to be the one to do the upkeep for it. Given the choice though, I would have much rather let some one else do the website, because it’s not something I’m interested in. This year, I’m going to start transitioning the role of website team/webmaster to FBLA because I’m graduating in June, so I kind of have to.
On a different note, I agree with North Sailor in that you never know where you can find people interested in robotics. (Apparently our accounting classes are also helping us take care of team finances.) I really shouldn’t talk, because my team is so small, but make sure you do advertising for your team everywhere.
Try adding a team history page =D And keep experimenting!!
That’s a nice story about some acceptance =) I’m glad your team has “grown” that way! I like the mural suggestion, too. In my school, the AP art kids get to paint the classroom doors!
Each year, we do a robotics presentation for the school, so everyone at least vaguely knows of the team. I was focusing on more personal recruiting, but talking to some of the artsy-er people never even crossed my mind. Thank you! I’ll definitely explore that option.
–Celia
That’s a shame you have to do it if you aren’t interested in it. At least it’s switching hands soon =) How long have you been on your team? When I joined, I was torn between joining programming or starting an animation subteam. I like animation, but I’m thinking of switching over my junior year.
I hear you on small teams (We’re at ten or eleven. One team in my area has FOUR. Another has 73). Unfortunately, I think it’s a bit intimidating for new people, especially freshmen, to come to our meetings. Especially if none of their friends are interested. That’s one more reason I wanted to try a more personal approach to recruiting.
–Celia
Thanks for the feedback! I’m trying to start changing some things up :yikes:
–Celia
I’ve been on the team since the beginning of last year, my junior year. I was interested in robotics as a freshman, but I only ever heard one announcement about a meeting that I couldn’t make. The only reason I’m in robotics now is because I sat next to some one in robotics last year, and he mentioned it to me once. One of my biggest regrets of high school is probably going to be not joining robotics sooner.
I completely agree with the fact that it’s hard to get new people to join small teams, because by the end of the season, you’re either all enemies (in which case a couple members would have left) or you’re all friends. By the last off season competition last year, we didn’t even have enough free people (I was taking ACT’s and one was working) to have a human player or student coach. We always start off with a lot of people, but we always lose most of them by the first couple weeks of build season. Sorry, I got really off topic.
And as to website maintenence, I don’t really mind, because it was an unique experience, it helped my team out a lot, and it doesn’t take too much time now that the hard part’s done (the making of the website).
I made a website for a contest when I was 10. It was absolutely awful, and looking back, I probably broke every W3 ‘rule’ there is. It had a marquee, links that were the same color as the text, and more.
Even though the site was bad, I liked making it, and stick with it.
Now I’m 18, and throughout the last 8 years, I’ve been on the staff team of several large gaming forums, two of which I’m still staff at. (one gets 300k page views a month and the other gets over 1 million.)
I’ve also been working as a web developer with a small company for the last year. I realize that’s it pretty much perfect for me.
I’m in college for IT, but I’m doing a web and mobile concentration.
Web design (and moreso development) for me is incredibly rewarding.
During my last year in FIRST I started a redesign effort on my team’s website, which will hopefully be live before build season starts (assuming the current members get it done :P)
I hope you don’t find this annoying, but I’m going to get a little picky. =) That’s a huge encouragement, as it means that you only have to fix a few little things, but your overall website is looking good. I may have already said some of these in a different way, but I hope you take it well.
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Move your ‘About Us’ content block above the ‘Team Guidlines’ block. The ‘Team Guidlines’ block is really big (which isn’t a bad thing) so you have to do quite a bit of scrolling before you reach it.
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If part of the purpose of your website is to atract new members, utilise your calendar! It is really well integrated in, so try adding some events, such as open days, or even days of team meetings. By doing so, you may get some new members.
Hope that helps! I will be following your website and how it goes =D