Website: 2007

WBI is proud to present its 2007 website. Our main goal this year has been to expand the website's content, revamp the theme and structure, and add historical details of our past seasons. We have striven to maintain high quality on the website. Read on to learn more about our website and the people behind it.

Webmasters

Students:

• Ohm - XHTML editor, content entering/editing, linguistic quality assurance
• Mohit - content entering/editing, content management, XHTML editor
• Nara - graphics, theming
• Himaja - content entering/editing
• Priya - content entering/editing
• Sam - photography
• Kyle - editing calendar

Mentors:

• Emil - Lead webmaster, PHP scripting, theme, graphics, content coordinator, quality assurance

How this Website Works:

• Every web page is written in PHP.
• Most of the content is stored in a MySQL database. This makes managing the site easier since the design and data are separated.
• The design (color, font, size, spacing, image effects, etc.) is written with CSS which provides a central place to change how everything is displayed.
• This site has many neat administration features hidden from normal users. Having these functions allow administrators to quickly and easily modify content without touching any PHP code.

The Theme

The tan colored theme honors our main sponsor, Purdue University. Over the years we have aimed to make our themes resemble Purdue's colors and we believe that this year's theme does just that.

The Menu

Menus are generated automatically by PHP script from an XML file using an XSL transformation. This is an example of how menuitems are defined:

<menuitem type="submenu" page="multimedia" text="Multimedia" url="multimedia" >
    <menuitem type="link" page="photos" text="Photos" url="photos" />
    <menuitem type="link" page="videos" text="Videos" url="videos" />
</menuitem>

Searching

The search is done by redirecting the search request from this website to Google and adding "site:boilerinvasion.org" to the end of the Google search. This tells Google to only search pages within boilerinvasion.org.

Some of Our Guidelines

The website subteam is expanding the efforts from the previous seasons; specifically, we are working to excel in the following areas:

• Maintain and improve on the layout and theme. WBI 461's website has been marked by a progression of layout and theme improvements over the years. Previous website season pages display respective screenshots and mark the evolution of the site. The new theme for the year emphasizes a di-chromatic black and tan color scheme (see "Theme" above).
• Highlight our sponsors. One of the biggest challenges in FIRST is securing the mony necessary to buy robot parts, pay competition entrance fees, and travel to regionals. WBI 461 is proud to have a strong set of sponsors, including Purdue University, who has long supported the team. To highlight these important companies and organizations, the website has a comprehensive listing. Moreover, the new theme was designed by studying sample themes provided by the Purdue Marketing Office. Its color scheme cements the relationship between Purdue and the team.
• Maintain focus on information. While many websites, both in FIRST and on the web in general, have shifted to Flash, Javascript, and other graphic design implementations, WBI has decided to keep its website relatively simple and unobtrusive. As is commonly cited, the most clicked button on the internet is "close" Flash animation. By staying away from "flashy" content, WBI is dedicated to providing solid content and information. This does not preclude a good-looking website; we only wish to make content our main perogative.
• Add content from previous years/seasons. The current WBI website was launched in the 2004 season. Since its launch, the content for each subsequent season has been expanding. One of WBI's goals has been to go back to the 2004 and 2005 seasons sections of the website, and add enough pages to match the content of the 2006 and 2007 seasons.
• Compatibility. While you may have dual-30"" widescreen LCD monitors on your desktop, your grandmother may very well be using an 800x600 15"" CRT. Thus, the WBI website is designed to be compatible and scalable for both situations. Though our website renders best with a 1024x768 resolution or higher, we are proud to say that every page is 800x600 compatible. We also avoid Flash and Javascript, not only because they don't add to our content, but also because many people simply don't have the requisite software for those features. We have also extensively tested our website on many different browers, old and new: Internet Explorer (vers. 4-7), Firefox (1-2), Mozilla (1-1.7), Seamonkey (1-1.1), Camino (1), Safari (1-2), and Opera (7-9).
• Integrate with FIRST community. WBI has taken pains this year to better integrate both the website and the team with the national and international FIRST community. We have striven to make our FIRSTWiki entry one of the most complete and up-to-date online. We also urge all team members to join the forums at ChiefDelphi and USFIRST.
• Team resources. One of the perennial strengths of the WBI website is its listing of extensive resources. These resources are applicable for both rookie teams and experienced ones. The famous KIPs (Knowledge is Power) tutorials provide a basic rundown of a first-year Purdue University engineering education. These resources have consistenly proven to be one of the most popular aspects of the website.
• Information/content for different audiences. WBI recognizes that not all visitors to its website are associated with FIRST or that they are even familiar with FIRST. The website has received over half a million hits from more than 60,000 distinct IP addresses. The site is thus designed for the "general" audience in mind. It provides information for the uninitiated and makes it easy for them to learn about FIRST and our team. For those who know what they are looking for, our menu structure makes it easy to navigate and find specific pages.

Recommended Software

If you are looking for software to develop your website, we have some suggestions. These programs won't magically do everything for you, but we have found them to be very helpful.

• Macromedia Dreamweaver - Rich and simple to use editor for XHTML, PHP, CSS, and lots more.
• Adobe Fireworks - A very easy to use image editor. This program is a very effective solution for editing, compressing, and creating simple graphics.
• Adobe Photoshop - The classic image editor. Depending on how good you are at it, you can create anything from simple images to artistic masterpieces.
• GIMP - This open source graphics program is free and works on virtually any operating system but it is not as intuitive as Adobe Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop.
• Sony Vegas Video - A powerful and intuitive program for digital video editing.
• Microsoft Notepad - The guru webmaster's favorite text editor in Windows.

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