If you're reading this right now, it's safe to assume you've been assigned to maintain this website.
Lucky you! 🗿
Assuming I've done my job right, most of the work would entail keeping the members tab current and up-to-date, along with moving graduated members to the Alumni section of the website. From one guy who knows nothing about front-end development to someone who hopefully knows a hell of a lot more, below are the main things you'll have to keep updated, and how to go about it.
Read over the whole thing, and if you still have questions ask your lead.
Make sure to clone this git repo to your machine to work on it, or do whatever else you would do in order to edit this from your machine. If you don't know what this means, ask the CS Leads. They would hopefully know? If not... Google.
When you commit, you must commit to the staging branch. Do NOT commit directly to master. Commit to staging, open a PR and have the CS Leads look at it first. As a matter of fact, only the CS Leads should ever merge a PR to master. If you don't know what this means... ask the CS Leads.
If you are working with multiple people, feel free to create your own branches to work independently, and then make PRs to merge to staging.
MAKE YOUR COMMIT MESSAGES DETAILED. I (and many others) will throw a massive fit if you make a large commit to staging with little to no message explaining what you did (I'm looking at you, commit b582f0f)
Make the commit messages you write in the following format:
Main Change/Overall Theme
- More details about the changes
- Use as many of these as you deem necessary
We prefer overly-detailed to under-detailed. While there is an art to it, do the best you can in providing enough information while not inundating the reader. For more specifics the reader can look at the code changes themselves.
To add a member to the website, you will need the following info:
- Picture
- Name
- Major
- Subteam
- Year of Graduation
- Any additional titles (lead, etc.)
Place the image of the member in the directory
Member-Profile-Pictures/Current
The HTML for a member looks like this. You would replace this example with the info of this specific member:
<a href="*Link to LinkedIn goes here*">
<div class="team-member">
<div class="grid-item *Insert Team Name*-Team">
<div class="box-team wow bounceInUp">
<!--If this animation is removed in the future,
this is just "box-team"-->
<img src="Member-Profile-Pictures/Current/
*Filename of Image of Member*" alt=""
class="img-circle img-responsive" />
<div class="text-pos">
<div class="name">*Insert Name*</div>
<div class="major">*Insert Major*</div>
<div class="year">*Insert Year of Graduation*</div>
</div>
</div>
<h5>*Insert addtl titles*</h5>
<!--If this member has no additional titles,
this line can be removed-->
</div>
</div>
</a>This can be copy-pasted into the HTML for the website. Update it with the information of the member you are adding to the website.
If you are missing the LinkedIn, for the members section specifically
you should write
#members
as a placeholder. Once you receive their LinkedIn, replace it.
As for where to insert it:
Obviously, over time that exact position would change, but it should remain fairly obvious where to insert new members. It would be at that same location, just after the /a that closes the "team-member" class.
Graduation is a bittersweet time for many. A pivotal chapter in your life comes to a close, and it is no longer acceptable to be drunk in public.
Despite any pleas and appeals, we are an undergraduate organization. While people doing their MEng are welcome to stick around and help, as far as we are concerned they are alumni and need to be moved to that section of the website for the sake of book-keeping.
This is a relatively simple task. The alumni section is verbatim copied from the members section on the main site. This is done intentionally. If the way members are presented on the main site changes, this must change too.
For starters, move the member's image from
Member-Profile-Pictures/Current
to
Member-Profile-Pictures/Alumni
The HTML of an alumni is largely the same. This should be a quick copy from the website, change some things, and paste job:
<a href="*Link to LinkedIn goes here*">
<div class="team-member">
<div class="grid-item *Insert Team Name*-Team">
<div class="box-team">
<img src="Member-Profile-Pictures/Alumni/
*Filename of Image of Member*.jpg" alt=""
class="img-circle img-responsive" />
<div class="text-pos">
<div class="name">*Name*</div>
<div class="major">*Major*</div>
<div class="year">*Year of Graduation*</div>
</div>
</div>
<h5>*Title AND Years Held*</h5>
<!--Like before, if this member had no additonal
titles this can be removed.-->
</div>
</div>
</a>The only major distinction is that their image must be in the alumni image directory, and the title they hold MUST be accompanied by the years that they filled that role.
The placeholder for missing LinkedIn information changes. You have two options:
- Remove the ability to click on their page
- Go to the top of the Alumni page
Either or is fine, but I imagine the former would be much easier to implement. Just remove the a and /a.
The latter is a bit more consistent as it means every alumni would be clickable in some fashion. This I will leave to your and the current CS and Business leads discretion. For now, I will implement the former.
Like with members, the location to insert another Alumni would be directly after the /a that closes the previous Alumni entry.
Feel free to skip ahead if this is boring to you. The section of alumni is missing a lot of people.
A bit of CUAD history here:
Before we became a project team, we were a club known as ARC: Aerial Robotics at Cornell. Depending on when you read this, this is either a very recent memory or new information. In 2020, the club essentially went dormant due to a variety of factors, including COVID and a lack of members as many had graduated.
Enter the 2020 Lead Staff.
They essentially took this club, pulled it out of its grave, and made it what it is today. All their efforts have culminated here, with you reading this verbose and overly-complicated readme. They'd be so proud... 😭
However, as a result of this, a lot of the information on members from around the founding of the club in 2017 until around 2023 is very incomplete and scattered. There is also a commit to blame that removed all the old members from the website. While sure, the images are still accessible thanks to Git providing great version control, some data is still missing.
On the website, there is a note telling alumni not present to contact us to be featured. That's where you come in!
If an alumni has requested to be featured on the website, make sure they have sent the following information to our email:
- Picture
- Name
- Major
- Subteam
- Year of Graduation
- LinkedIn (for alums this is optional)
- Any additional titles (lead, etc.)
If any info is missing feel free to email them back asking for this info.
These requests to be added to the website can be taken at face value, but if you really want to check you can check the slack or the campusgroups. Very few people ever properly leave those, so it's very likely information is still there. Either way, the world isn't out to get you. Unless it's obviously fake or conflicts with data we have, it's safe to take these requests at face value.
Take the following HTML template (same as above), and add their info:
<a href="*Link to LinkedIn goes here*">
<div class="team-member">
<div class="grid-item *Insert Team Name*-Team">
<div class="box-team">
<img src="Member-Profile-Pictures/Alumni/
*Filename of Image of Member*.jpg" alt=""
class="img-circle img-responsive" />
<div class="text-pos">
<div class="name">*Name*</div>
<div class="major">*Major*</div>
<div class="year">*Year of Graduation*</div>
</div>
</div>
<h5>*Title AND Years Held*</h5>
<!--Like before, if this member had no additonal
titles this can be removed.-->
</div>
</div>
</a>Exactly like above, this should be inserted after the /a that closes the "team-member" class of a previous entry.
Do your best to put Alumni in order of graduation year, and if they can then further be sorted by team even better. But, just by graduation year is fine.
This website is very old, and is built on some pretty old accompanying code. I don't know the first thing about front-end development, so if you do feel free to add to this list how you see fit. However, from the things I can discern/the work I've done so far, the following needs to be finished:
- Get NavBar working on Alumni Page (Current fix is spaghetti.)
- Cut down on animations - it looks fucking stupid
- Address why you need to open a new tab to access alumni page (This might be a local issue??)
- Fix mobile site
- Removing Caurosel for Team Introductions (it looks like horseshit)
- Updating js files (bootstrap 3 LMAO) This should only be done if you really know what you're doing. If you're like me, this can go unaddressed for the time being.
- Moving this to its own domain (CUAD.org ????)
- Rework Member/Alumni page. Make it a JSON and parse it through.
Of course, make sure to check in with your lead to see if anything else needs to be accomplished with the website.
Upon some discussion with the CS Team, it has come to my attention that this website is just... bad. It has way too much JS, way too many animations, and just straight up bad code for what should really only be a two-page website. When you, the current webmaster, are brought in, this will likely be a focal point of discussion. If we are confident in your ability we might just give you the go ahead and nuke this entire website to start fresh. All of this would be replaced.
If this option is chosen, it's important to know that the main features of this website must remain the same. While I hope the presentation is changed, the bulk of the information should remiain the same:
- Who we are
- What we do
- Subteam info
- Members and Alumni, with redirects to LinkedIn so people can get a sense of what our members do currently/post-grad.
As stated earlier, this decision would be made only after much deliberation and discussion. Should it come to pass, we believe in you, young grasshopper.
I'd like to give a special thank you to the 2021-2023 lead staff for inspiring my deep passion for Aerial Robotics, for always being so warm and welcoming, and for providing some unforgettable nights in the form of team socials.
I'd also like to thank the leads I'm working with now in 2023-2024 for being so diligent and for sharing the same passion I have.
To the future leads of this team - thank you for keeping our dream alive.
And to you, the poor sucker in charge of this website - Thank you for all of your efforts and hard work.
This readme was written by Santiago Blaumann.
Last modified 7/19/23 by Santiago Blaumann