Why a website still matters#
Social media is rented land; your website is the home base you own. Sponsors, judges, prospective members, and other teams all check it. A current, professional site signals a serious, sustainable program.
Choosing a platform#
- Wix / Squarespace - drag-and-drop builders, fastest path for non-coders, paid plans, easy custom domain. Best if no one wants to maintain code.
- WordPress - flexible, common, large plugin ecosystem.
- GitHub Pages (often with Jekyll) - free static hosting, version-controlled, and easy to hand off as members graduate (transfer the GitHub org). Popular with code-savvy teams — a common pattern is a static site generator (e.g., Jekyll) hosted on GitHub Pages under the team's GitHub organization, which keeps the site version-controlled and easy to hand off as members graduate. Best if you have programmers who want full control.
Whatever you pick, get a real custom domain (e.g., team1234.org) - it looks far more credible than a free subdomain and reinforces your brand.
Site structure (the pages that matter)#
Design for your three key audiences - sponsors, recruits, and judges:
- Home - who you are in one screen: number, name, logo, a strong photo, and a one-line mission.
- About / The Team - story, mission, subteams, mentors, and your team photo.
- Robots / Seasons - a page per year with the robot, results, and reveal video. This doubles as a record for award submissions.
- Outreach / Impact - your community work, demos, and STEM events; this is gold for the Impact Award and for sponsors.
- Sponsors - logos (linked), tiers, and a clear "Sponsor Us" call to action with your packet.
- Join / Contact - how students join and how to reach you.
- Blog / News (optional) - build updates and event recaps that also help SEO.
Design and accessibility#
- Apply your brand: colors, fonts, logo, and consistent imagery.
- Mobile-first: most visitors are on phones - test on a phone.
- Accessibility: add alt text to images, ensure sufficient color contrast (WCAG AA, 4.5:1 for body text), and use real headings so screen readers and search engines understand your pages. This widens your reach and is simply the right thing to do.
- Keep it fast: compress images before uploading.
Keeping it alive#
The hardest part of a website is maintenance. To survive graduation:
- Document how to edit the site in your team wiki.
- Assign a web lead each year and a backup.
- For GitHub Pages, keep the repo in a team organization (not a personal account) so access transfers cleanly.
- Do a preseason audit: update the year, robot page, roster, and sponsor logos.
A stale website with last year's robot tells sponsors and judges you don't follow through. A current one tells them you do.
the part worth keeping
Key takeaways
- Your website is owned media for sponsors, recruits, and judges; a current, on-brand site signals a sustainable program
- Pick a platform matched to your skills (Wix/Squarespace for non-coders, GitHub Pages for programmers) and use a custom domain
- Plan for handoff: keep a GitHub org, document editing, assign a web lead, and audit the site every preseason
Media, Branding & OutreachDigital Presence: Social Media & Websitelesson 2 of 3
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where this came from
Sources and corrections
This lesson is AI-assisted: drafted from primary sources, then reviewed and edited by hand. Errors still get through. When one is reported we fix it and write down what changed, in public, in the corrections log.
sources and further reading
- docs.github.comGitHub Pages documentation
- 1418.teamTeam 1418 website (GitHub Pages + Jekyll example)
clipped to this lesson
Articles that go further on this
The lesson gets you through the topic. These go wider on it, and they read in one sitting.
- 7 min readHow to Recruit FRC Team Members (and Actually Keep Them)Club fair tactics, a first meeting that doesn't scare people off, real week-one work for rookies, and why teams lose members before build season even starts./blogread it
- 4 min readHow to Get FRC Sponsors: A Fundraising GuideA practical guide to funding your FIRST Robotics Competition team: where to find sponsors, grants like NASA and BAE, and how to ask the right way./blogread it
- 7 min readFIRST Impact Award Executive Summary: Questions + Fill-In WorksheetThe current FIRST Impact Award (formerly Chairman's) executive summary questions, character limits, a fill-in worksheet with per-question guidance, and what strong answers look like./blogread it
answer sheet
Lesson quiz
All 3 right completes the lesson. Miss one and only that question comes back, anything you already answered correctly stays banked.
0 of 3 answered
01A strong, well-documented online presence most directly supports a team's case for which FRC award?
02Which audiences should an FRC team's website be designed to serve?
03For a GitHub Pages site, what keeps access transferable as members graduate?
Answer every question to submit.
All 29 lessons in Media, Branding & Outreachopenclose
01 / prerequisites
02 / team-brand-identity
03 / content-creation
04 / digital-presence
05 / outreach-awards-sponsorship
06 / worked-examples-mini-projects
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 1: A Repeatable Match-Day Photo Workflow
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 2: A 60-Second Highlight Reel in DaVinci Resolve (Free)
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 3: A CAD-to-Render Robot Reveal
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 4: A One-Page Press Release for Your Local Paper
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 5: Auto-Pull Match Results from The Blue Alliance API
07 / common-mistakes-troubleshooting
08 / advanced-techniques-case-studies