Welcome to our new www.ftcpenn.org website. We welcome you to explore and Contact Us with any feedback you have. We are still tweaking things and are still in the process of migrating past season information, so thank you for your patience while we continue our work.
We’ve made many improvements we think you will like, while retaining a layout that should feel familiar. Below are some of the features you will find.
Simpler Layout
We simplified the menus while still providing access to our current and rich history of Pennsylvania FIRST Tech Challenge teams and events. The most commonly used menus remain at the top and organization-type items were moved to the footer. When you visit the FTC Events and Teams pages, the current season information is displayed first and you access past season information by clicking on one of the season game logos at the bottom of the page. For example:
- FTC Events starts by displaying the list of upcoming events for the current season. If you are looking for full event calendars, simply choose one at the bottom of the page. This should allow you to more quickly find the information you want while minimizing the amount of scrolling as the season progresses.
- Teams now displays the list of registered teams for the current season with the all seasons available at the bottom of the page.
- Photos now has all seasons on one page. You can jump directly to any season by clicking on its game logo.
- About and a new Contact Us are in the footer menus.
- There is a table of contents on the top of some of our content-heavy pages (Event Participation Policy, Processing Event Registration Requests etc.)
Mobile Friendly
Hopefully the experience is much, much better on your mobile devices, for both phones and tablets. We are trying hard to provide a good mobile experience, but there are a few spots we know that are not a good as they could be – specifically tables that are initially hidden when you view the page (e.g. Team Rankings and Match Results Details on event pages). Anyway, browse around using your mobile devices and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.
Consistency
You will find a more consistent feel across the website, and especially within a specific area (e.g. FTC Events, Teams, etc.). Tables throughout the site have similar styling and include a search box to help you more quickly find the information that interests you.
Announcements and Email Archive
Our website Announcements and Email Archive are now in a blog-like format. This should make it easier to browse, find, and read the items that interest you.
More Improvements on the Way
Our first priority is to migrate the remaining content from our old site to our new site. However, we do plan to add additional features that we did not have time to develop for this initial release. Here are a few of things that are on our minds:
- Enhanced site-wide search: We added a basic site-wide search capability in this initial release, but in most cases the search results lack context. Look for improvements here.
- Enhanced Teams page: Bring back team social media information and a map of teams.
- Enhanced team search: Add the capability to search and display the information we have about a team – registered seasons, events participated in, awards won, etc.
We hope you enjoy our new website. If you have comments, find issues, or would like to suggest new features, please Contact Us.
Dave Hackett, Roslyn Nilson, and Tom Zawislak