Developer Web Server Setup (on Windows XP)
Please read the introduction (, 81.8 KB) first.
Program	Requirements	Tutorials
Apache2 HTTP Server (Apache Software Foundation)	None	Apache2 Installation (, 222 KB) Release Server (Coming Soon) Change Permissons (Coming Soon)
ActivePerl (ActiveState)	Apache2	ActivePerl Installation (, 279 KB)
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (The PHP Group)	Apache2	PHP Installation (, 355 KB)
MySQL (MySQL AB)	Apache2 ActivePerl and/or PHP	MySQL Installation (, 901 KB)
phpMyAdmin (phpMyAdmin Devel Team)	Apache2 PHP MySQL	phpMyAdmin Installation (, 159 KB)
Server Test Pages (, 1.99 KB)	Apache2 ActivePerl and/or PHP	None
Apache Server Start/Stop Batch Files (, 517 B)	Apache2 MySQL	None

Past Championship winners:

• 2008 – Team 115
• 2007 – Team 368

Essentials

• Planning
  • Purpose-what do you want to accomplish? How will your site be used?
  • A website should have something of value to offer visitors: current information, a team-centric gathering place, personal interest blog, multimedia, articles, stories.
  • Lay out a flowchart of your site map. How many pages and for what purpose, on what topics? What links to what? Sketch it all out.
  • Plan on changing your mind and on future growth.
  • How much time do you plan to devote to maintaining, upgrading, adding content? Forums, blogs, and wiki’s require a LOT of effort to maintain.
  • Plan your content including future growth. Make your content quickly scan-able by the casual “browser”
  • Organization-make it easy to maintain by separating things out through your directory structure
  • Include a contact email link.
• Design
  • Try to engage, inform, entertain your visitors
  • Common theme throughout
  • Easy-on-the-eyes color schemes
  • Keep the number of distinct colors down
  • Stress subtle effects rather than distracting ones. Avoid too active pages. Use to be everyone put motion gifs everywhere. Motion attracts the eye and if the whole is in motion people won’t know where to look.
  • Mockup your design and get several other web-savvy people to critic it.
• Optimize for speed-small compressed graphics, common shared graphics that don’t have to be re-downloaded, slim your HTML down.
• Clarity- be direct and to the point in your writing. Be consistent in where buttons are placed, how links are displayed. Don’t overcrowd the page, preserve lots of whitespace so the users eye goes automatically to what’s important. Visitors will read short words and simple sentences, but skip over large blocks of words. Keep your paragraphs short, maybe a couple of sentences.
• Keep content current. Update your pages regularly. Whether they are your teammates, community, or other FIRST teams, make people want to come back often to see what’s new. Check and fix or remove broken links, especially, to outside sites that can change with no notice. Periodically take a figurative step back and take a critical look at your own work. Does it still fit your plan or have you aimlessly wandered and muddied the waters?

2008 WEBSITE AWARD SCORING

Content (50 points)

• How well does the site explain FIRST and promote its vision?
• Is there a prominent link to the FIRST website on the website home page?
• Does the site use correct FIRST terminology and contain the updated FIRST logo?
• Does the website clearly tell the team story and contain the team name, FIRST program team number and physical location of the team?
• Does the website contain updated information dealing with the current season?
• Does the website include recognition of sponsors, mentors and volunteers?
• Does the website include helpful resources for other FIRST teams?
• Does the website contain helpful non-text content such as music, sound, animation , or video?
• Is this site dedicated exclusively to a FIRST team and its activities?
• Does this site follow copyright infringement rules correctly?

Visual Design (25 points)

• Does the website communicate a visual experience reflective of the identity of the team?
• Is the site engaging and does it encourage exploration?
• Does the fort size and format make the site easy to read?
• Does the website contain visuals relating to the current game and the current season’s work as a team?
• Is the home pate inviting to all readers, or is it cluttered with team member specific information?

Functionality and Interactivity (25 points)

• Does the website work well and the homepage load quickly?
• Do the links work throughout the site?
• Is important information easily accessible?
• Do external links open new, separate browser windows?
• Can I easily return to the website from an outside link?

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