Hey everyone,
Http://www.delphielite.com
We’ve done a little restructuring and added some new objects on the page so tell us what you think. All comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks in advance. 
:]
When you go to post a comment, it asks you for a user name and password. if you hit Cancel like 10 times, it goes away and you can post whatever.
Well done, very clean design!
OK that bug is fixed. I had a couple of stupid mistakes in the configuration of the news script we used. Thank you for pointing out the problem. 
If anyone can suggest good PHP scripts for our page as well it would be appreciated. I have a limited knowledge of PHP code. I know enough to use it but not hardly enough to write it. I don’t want to change the site too much but little things wouldn’t be too bad. 
For PHP scripts (pretty much everything you will ever need): http://php.resourceindex.com/
As for the design, well done. I really like the top header and the use of different shades of color, while sticking to 2 main colors, throughout the page. First thing I noticed, way too many FIRST logos. Stick with just one, and the one in the header is probably your best bet in my opinion. With 3 of them on each page, it’s just way too many. For the bottom of the page the “Team 48 Delphi E.L.I.T.E. is proud to be a member of the FIRST Robotics community.” is a nice little touch, but you don’t need the logo. Nor on the side bar. On the main page, with the “Current News”, entries are typed in gray. I didn’t see gray used on any other page, I only saw black. To keep it consistent, I’d suggest making that black (plus, the gray is a little bit harder to read with the light yellow background).
With the positioning of the 2004 Web Site Excellence Award, on all of the pages except the main page that sidebar is used only for links. The Award picture being right below that is kind’ve lonely and isolated. I think it would be better positioned in the bottom of the main area by the “Proud member of FIRST” statement, or maybe somewhere else. It just seems isolated with no other graphics around it and only links in that sidebar.
With the links on the sidebar, I wasn’t sure what “Team 48” meant until I clicked on it. I think if you said something such as “Subteams” or something like that instead the user would know more about what to expect on that page.
Overall, some pages need some content. I love the summaries of previous years, very thorough and well done. I would only suggest that maybe you could add a photo of the robot and/or team photo onto those pages.
I have to say, the site is very consistent and very well put together. Great job! I saw a few “Coming Soon!” areas, and once the content for those are up, I think the site will be excellent. I hope this gives you a few ideas on little things you might be able to do.
I really like it except for the header image which looks jumbled, kind of like it’s in a timewarp from 1997 or something. If you could clean that up I’d like the whole design.
what would you suggest that i do to make it look better. what’s jumbled about it.
First get rid of the Matrix code in the background - you’re not supposed to use the FIRST logo like that anyway. The “new generation” and “old classic” text are just sort of floating over there, and the stripes don’t really go with anything. You could probably do something nice with that atomic-looking thing on the right. Here, I made you a sample of what I’d do. I kept the stripes because I’m sure not going to extract that logo from that background.
I think the site is very well designed. Good job.
What do you mean by “you’re not suppose to use the FIRST Logo like that anyway.”?
If your talking about the background part I don’t see any problem it doesn’t distort the logo or anything. Besides, I always send an email to Marian Murphy whenever I do anything involving the FIRST Logo on my teams site. I always ask if there are any problems and I have never recieved any complaints from her.
There’s a thread in General Discussion or whatever it’s called with the FIRST logo guidelines. They specify some minimum margin around the logo.
Correct, however if i remember right from talking with Marian there are some exceptions to the margin around the logo. Besides the way the logo is on the site still seems to be within the rules anyway.
I have read these rules with much pain and that is precisely why the header was changed. upon looking at these rules i resized the logo keeping the background at first so that it could be used as a guideline in photoshop. the logo was resized border and all and then the background was removed. The border is within the rules.
Secondly i do take in to consideration what you say about the interference with the binary. I will be looking the rules over once again to see but i don’t think that it interferes with the readablitiy of the logo itself.
thanks you all for your input
Email Marian Murphy at FIRST, her email is [email protected] she can tell you anything you want to know about the logo, including wether or not its within the rules. 