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Written by Michael Lawton
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Saturday, 13 February 2010 16:18 |
Free Range Robotics' Website is built using Joomla - a dynamic content management system (CMS). This means we can easily add articles and photos etc; and use extensions such as event management, forums and guestbooks. Also, we can control access to certain team documents and forum categories etc. The goal of this site is a central place where vex teams can find all the latest news - photos and videos included, see how our sub teams are going, chat on the forum and find helpful tips on how to build and programme robots.
The site is made using the latest version of Joomla 1.5, and a lot of 3rd party extensions, some of which are:
- Phoca Gallery
- AllVideos Reloaded
- Kunena Forum
- JEvents
- Phoca Guestbook
- Vermod News Mailer
- JS Jamba Template
- Xmap
- YOOcarousel
Although the site has not been coded from scratch, most of the extensions have had their CSS modified to fit in with the site template (a dark template takes a lot of work to make it look good). Some changes have also been made to the HTML and PHP. The template's CSS has also been customized (e.g. the menu). The layout of the whole template has also been changed. A lot of articles are made using plain HTML and inline and external CSS rather than the built-in WYSIWYG editor for greater control over the display. Not including writing the content, hundreds of hours have been put into customizing the site and adding new features.
The ranking of this site is very high (often appearing higher than the official New Zealand Vex Robotics site in search engines!). It is made to work in all major browsers (although we do not support IE6). The site was designed and built by Michael Lawton (aged 16 at the time of starting it). Any suggestions are welcome. |
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Last Updated on Monday, 05 April 2010 15:39 |
