CS Day 2012 Web Competition Rules
It's election year! Let's pay attention and make our decision for who might become the next president and lead the country to quickly recover from the current recession. Pluto the dog, Mickey Mouse, and the current president, Daisy Duck, are on the shortlist. Your team is required to choose one cartoon candidate you like the most and would like to support. If you do not like any of these three mentioned, then you can do a write-in candidate for the next president – an imaginary, idealized cartoon candidate whom you can find some information about on the Internet -- and develop a website for him/her to help him/her to win the election.
Your website is supposed to help with the following aspects, among others:
- Publicize your favorite candidate's election platform and key opinions/ideas on important issues in order to attract more supporters.
- Interact with the people of this country, e.g., anyone can leave a notice/suggestion (no need of sign-in first) or raise a specific question (for the candidate in particular) or a general question (may be answered by the candidate's campaign staff).
- Raise funds, etc.
The main theme of your website is to help your favorite candidate win the election. Therefore, your main page should identify the candidate, present his/her election platform, and provide an itemized list of important issues (each as a clickable link leading to more detailed pages) that presumably reflect the main concerns of the general public and are addressed by the candidate. The main page should also have entries (usually via links) for users to raise their questions (you should provide dedicated pages for specific questions to the candidate and general questions that may be answered by his campaign staff), provide opinions/suggestions, and make donations (fund raising), etc. The donation page should contain a form with spaces for a supporter to enter his/her name, phone number, address, e-mail address, credit card information, and the amount to donate, etc. Professional websites often instantly check the validity of user input, e.g., the phone number of 618-4543-2176 would instantly be captured as invalid, and the user would be prompted to reenter the information. You may integrate this kind of function if you know how to do it.
Important Notes:
- Server-side functions (such as form handling upon submission) are not required and will NOT earn any extra credit for your team.
- You can copy any relevant content from other websites as pure text but you shall NOT copy or simulate the structures of other web pages which the judges could easily identify if you did so.
- More technically, you can use whatever skills that any of your team members possess. But you must:
- Implement the main functions as mentioned above.
- Have at least five pages, including the main page. You may include more pages based on your design needs.
- From each web page, the user should be able to conveniently go to any other page by mouse clicks. There is no requirement for the contents of these pages other than what is needed to meet the project goals.
Additional Notes:
1. Generally, web technologies can be classified as client-side technologies and server-side technologies (both sides include various languages and tools). Your team is expected to do the client-side development only. But if your team has the knowledge, you may implement some cool functions using server-side support such as PHP, CGI, Ajax. However, the judges will solely look at what you delivered and demonstrated at the client-side.
2. You can include images (graphics) and video clips on your web page. To do this, you can create any image by using any type of software available to you. You can also include downloaded materials into your website. But the key point is – you have to have everything seamlessly integrated into your website which should appear as a coherent whole and serve your sole purpose – to attract more supporters to your favorite candidate.
3. You can include images (graphics) on your web page. To do this, you can create any image by using any type of software. You can even include downloaded images and materials into your website. But the key point is ?you have to have everything seamlessly integrated into your website which should appear as a coherent whole.
3. You are required to upload your web pages at least three times during the competition; preferably at 11:00, 12:30, and 1:30. An assistant is available to help you upload the web pages developed by your team to our department web server when needed. We suggest you upload your web pages every hour. This is because the judging process is conducted in real time; i.e., when you are developing the website, the judges are evaluating your design.
Your design will be evaluated in real time, based on the following criteria:
- Organization
- Creativity
- Content
- User Friendliness (including convenient navigation among the topics and pages)
- Visual Design