October 1st, 2004

Technical Website Design/Showcase
1

Sparky is back!

Please come check out the new version of Sparky384.com on October 1st, 2004. We will be opening the site up to the world for viewing. This year the website will have many new features and team resources. I’m looking forward to another great year in the FIRST Competition and good luck to all the other webmasters and their websites.

2

We have a few new materials and one big new project that we will launch in January. At Sparky, we CARE. :cool:

3

I’ll be looking forward to check out the competition. Its always great to learn from other webmasters and come up with ideas. Hopefully this year, we can take the National Website Award with a good PHP/MySQL backend site.

4

I look forward to visiting your website. If there is any preview of your site for this year I’d love to check it out…

5

www.sparky384.com

Its open!.. please come check it out… i’m open to suggestions and ideas on the website so please post them here. There are a lot of sections yet to be completed due to the early release of our website, but many will be up soon with our installation of our gallery software.

Thanks

6

I like the nice crisp design. I think the design is enough to win a website award once you get the content up.

I hope you guys put up a form with the mail function enabled so teams can easily submit information or comments under the contact section.

7

the site looks nice… everything is laying out very neatly… great job… when are you guys planning on adding pictures and start the forum? :slight_smile:

8

Looks really nice, I really like the layout. A couple suggestions (keep in mind that though I may seem a little harsh, I’m just trying to give you my honest opinions):

  • You might try changing the links on the top to rollover images, to make them stand out. Out of convention, people are used to having links change color when rolled over.
  • The sponsors page is too long, it should be divided up into 2, maybe 3 pages. Its a lot of sponsors, something I wish we had, but with that comes a lot of scrolling.
  • Consistency with the links (especially on the sponsors page). I like the headers being orange on the rest of the site, but you need to distinguish which headers are links and which are not.

Overall, I think its a great layout, not too busy, good color scheme, good menu system. Once you get the content up, you should be in the running for a website award.

9

I love it. Webmasters take note; some simplicity in design and a professional look does wonders for a site. Maybe I’ll be more critical when I get a better look at it, but I doubt it.

10

Very nice I love the minimalistic design :slight_smile:

11

Thank You All for your comments that has helped me figure out what I need to do to the website, and I look forward to getting our forum up soon so teams can chat. Also our videos and pictures should be up soon.

I look forward to all of the other team’s websites and what they are designing :wink:

12

pretty nice :slight_smile:

13

Hey Pat, could you change the main banner from Team 384 to Sparky 384? Seems more concise.

14

I tried using Sparky384 in the heading, it didn’t look right… I think we should leave it to Team384 and i’ll make the www.sparky384.com bigger so people can see it.

15

I like it. Simple is good.
It’s been stated before, but I do think that your sponsors page is a little long. Maybe you should try to break it up by the sponsors that gave you certain amounts of money (Corporate, Business, Personal, etc.). That way there isn’t the thought that popped up in my head that “I’m too lazy to read all this.”
Otherwise, once you get all the content up I think you’ll have a very nice website there. Can’t wait for the forum!

16

Thanks, i’m in the process right now of going down our sponsors list and figuring out our sponsors for this year. That list is of last year’s sponsors so not all those are our current sponsors.

Thanks for the nice comments and suggestions.

P.S. The media section should almost be done this weekend. JosephM and I are working hard on getting the media uploaded for this weekend. I should have the forums setup soon aswell.

17

Just saw this and it sort of bugged me.

As a webdesigner, I have never had someone tell me “I love how everything is backed by a MySQL database and written in PHP!” I want my users to have fluid experiences, find the information they want, buy the product they want, and not worry about implementation.

You have done a good job when people can do whatever it is they meant to do on your site. Technical implementation and design are means to an end, not ends in and of themselves.

18

Indeed. Nobody really cares how it’s done, it’s the user experience that matters. The site looks very nice. One thing that bugs me, though, is the forum. I’ve noticed that a lot of FIRST team websites have forums, very few of which get enough traffic to merit the countless subforums they have and even fewer of which sport templates matching the rest of the site. Are you planning on using the forum for much internal team communication? Do you honestly expect any people from other teams to become active members? Personally I’d love it if some team created a good alternative to ChiefDelphi, but that’ll probably never happen due to CD’s popularity and the fact that most people in the FIRST community I’ve met seem to love the extremely friendly and PC atmosphere here.

So, to sum up, I like your site in general but predict the forum won’t get much use.

19

While I won’t speak for Pat at all, previous web forums we have used have gone the way of the dodo. I don’t think we are planning on having this one be used as much as CD, or even used 1/100th as much as CD, but for internal back-and-forth team discussion I think it’s a good thing. I’m currently thinking about how to get it running and maybe getting the kids to check the forums daily for important reminders and other things.

Anyway, thanks for the comments.

20

The forums for Team384 are basicly a way for team members to quickly post and to respond to messages that need to be posted. Email lists are great but sometimes they just don’t do the trick so, our forums will be used for quick messaging. In addition to team messaging… it helps other teams who need to contact us quickly.

I agree no forum in the FIRST community will get as much traffic as ChiefDelphi but having our own forums for our own use is a good thing for us… I think…

Thanks again for the wonderful comments…