Hello, this is my first year entering our website for the website competition award. I’m working alone on this site so its taken me some time to develop. Everything besides the forum is written from scratch.
Let me know what you think and please let me know if I left anything out. The link is www.team1225.com . We’re a 2 year team so there’s not much past information to display. The ‘contact’ and the ‘calender of events’ sections aren’t completed but I expect them to be done soon. I haven’t got the chance to add all the members names to the Bio page either >.>. I should do that now… There’s no search either. I’m sure I can use google as a powerful search engine.
I’ve got:
A blog type system in which mentors can log in and make posts and manage the site.
Authing system based on phpbb. I found some useful API’s to make a fast and safe log-in enviroment.
Some First stuff on the homepage and a ‘What is First’ page.
A photo gallery
Making the site drove me crazy mostly of making it IE compatible. If you look at the source there’s a couple hacks. Ignore them. FF all the way!
Nicely creative front page! I liked the magnifying glass thingy, but I think it needs to be closer to the top. It really distracted me when I rolled over the links at the top, if it was closer to the row of links, it would be more obvious that the change was caused by the different links.
I viewed it in Firefox and was surprised when it told me that, cool touch. But I don’t think you need to say that on every page.
I did not like the red font, to me it was hard to read.
I also liked the way the bios flipped open and closed.
Good start, I’ll have to check it out in IE and when you get more content!
I like the site, but I must agree the text color’s a tidbit hard to read on the linkbar. A bit more contrast would help greatly–as it is I doubt colorblind people could read it–and accessibility IS one of the grading criteria for FIRST websites!
Using phpBB as your login system is an interesting idea; just be careful and keep phpBB up to date as it’s not known to be the most secure package in existence. Also watch out for phpBB3–it’s due out soon!
I use an older version of Mozilla as my primary browser, and I got a bit of a clipping issue with your “This site best viewed in FireFox” image occasionally overrunning some of the content.
Wesley said pretty much everything I was going to but here are some specific things that I found hard about your site.
The colors are very hard to read for me at least. The Dark Green and Gray do not compliment the black background as well as some of your maroons and whites. Also, the navigation bar is two rows for me (in FF3) and I’m not sure if it is supposed to be or not.
Besides that I like it. I like how you integrated the FIRST movie and all of that onto a page, maybe try putting the about first page in the navigation bar?
Finally I opened up FF:IE and I scrolled over contacts and the middle of the screen turned white for some apparent reason? Maybe check into that a little.
Anyways thanks for looking out for FF first Most people design it in IE and than make it FF compatible and some of those sites drive me crazy!
I see what most of you mean about color contrast with the Red title text at the top of the page. But I do think white and red has enough contrast to be accessible. I also thought green was different enough to stand out so a user could say, “Hey, that’s a link!”. Its not necessarily dark green. Its color: green;
You have a point with the grey contact at the bottom of the screen. That will be changed.
The colors are very hard to read for me at least. The Dark Green and Gray do not compliment the black background as well as some of your maroons and whites. Also, the navigation bar is two rows for me (in FF3) and I’m not sure if it is supposed to be or not.
Nothing on that page is really black. Just darker shades of red. The only thing closest to black is the title bar and that’s reddish black. But that’s a good point, color blind users probley will have trouble reading my site. I’m gonna change the white font on the “Next Meeting Box.”
I’ll fix that IE bug too with the contacts link. Stupid IE.
Checked the site out in IE today, you must be working on it as I was looking at it, because I thought the spelling of the word “Sponsor” on the sponsor page changed from Sponser to Sponsor as I watched. I’m glad you caught that and hopefully will change it in all the other places too.
I didn’t have any problems viewing anything I looked at in IE.
And I like the font of the red text better now than yesterday, much more readable.
Alex,
It is good to see Hendersonville, NC on the map with a FIRST team. I did not get a chance to speak with any of you at the kick-off in Columbia. I will try to get by at the regionals - I am originally from Brevard but have lived and work in Seneca, SC. I am with Team 343 - Metal In Motion.
Just a word on your webpage. It is looking great. I know, from experience, that a great webpage is not an overnight creation. Just keep fine tuning it and it will be an award winner. My suggestion: please place a link on the page that will enable someone like me to send you/team a personal e-mail. I clicked your contact link without success. I also am missing an e-mail contact listing for you on this discussion board,but you have a Yahool IM address. Anyway, I will keep checking the 1225 site. Please visit the www.metalinmotion.com site when you can. We are constantly “tweeking” it too. Good luck. I hope you and all teams have an outstanding season.
Gil
I also thought green was different enough to stand out so a user could say, “Hey, that’s a link!”. Its not necessarily dark green. Its color: green; 
The only thing closest to black is the title bar and that’s reddish black.