Team websites
Sponsors look you up before they reply. A dead Wix page from three seasons ago is worse than no page, and a team site is exactly the kind of thing that stops being maintained the moment the student who built it graduates.
Free for every team · run by a 501(c)(3)
In use on Robolyst
Team sites live
14
published on Robolyst
A team page assembled from blocks, on your own domain.
On screen
The page itself, captured out of the live demo, which anyone can open, without an account.
Sites teams are running
A few live team sites, picked at random.
Edit it without knowing HTML
Pages are built from blocks (text, images, galleries, sponsor walls, forms) arranged in an editor. A new webmaster can pick it up in an afternoon.
Nothing is public until you say so
A new site is a draft. You build it, look at it, show a mentor, and publish when it is ready. Half a homepage is never the thing a sponsor finds while you are still working on it, and a site can go back to draft later without being deleted.
Your own domain
Point team1234.org at your site and it serves from there, with its own sitemap and its own search presence. No Robolyst branding in the URL.
Blocks for sponsor walls and live results
The blocks are the ones a robotics team keeps rebuilding by hand.
- A sponsor wall with tiers, driven by the same sponsor list the rest of Team HQ uses
- Contact and interest forms that land in Team HQ
- Your competition results, pulled live from the archive
- A donation page, and a ledger block for teams that publish where the money went
- Visitor analytics, without embedding a third-party tracker on a site students visit
Post your CAD and code to the open-source directory
Post a release (CAD, code, a scouting spreadsheet, an outreach curriculum) as files or a repo link, and it goes into the public open-source directory where teams find each other’s work and vote the useful things up. Downloads are counted per project, so “did anyone use this” has an answer.
Embeds for a school page or Wix site
Plenty of teams are stuck on a school page or a Wix site nobody can move. Embeds put your live record on it anyway: pick blocks, arrange them, copy the snippet. The whole design travels in the link, so there is nothing to host and it keeps working when the student who made it graduates.
- Rankings, next match, award list, season stats, sponsor reel, a live event ticker
- Ready-made snippets for Notion, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Google Sites and OBS
- A QR code for the ones that end up on a pit banner
- Themed to your colours, and legible on a light page or a dark one
Followers who hear when you compete
Parents, sponsors and alumni want to know how Saturday went and will never open a results site to find out. Anyone can follow your team at robolyst.org/follow/your-number with just an email address, and they hear from you on competition day and again when the event is over.
- A heads-up the morning of each event with where to watch, and a recap after it: rank, record, playoffs and awards, in words a first-time parent follows
- Big moments, every match result and match reminders for the followers who want more. The last two need an account, since nobody wants ten emails a day
- A follow button on your site and on your embeds, and a QR code sized for a flyer or a pit banner
- Your own message on the follow page, and a follower count in Team HQ
- Every email carries a one-click way to stop
Hosting and certificates handled
Hosting, certificates and updates are handled. The site does not go down because a card expired over the summer.
Questions teams ask
- Is the website free?
- Yes, including hosting. A custom domain is the one thing you buy yourself, from any registrar.
- Can we use our existing domain?
- Yes. Point it at the site and verify it from Team HQ. Until it is verified the site stays reachable at its Robolyst address.
- Do visitors get tracked?
- Page views are counted for your own analytics. There is no third-party advertising tracker on team sites.
- When does the site go live?
- When you publish it. A site starts as a draft that only your team can open, so there is no window where an unfinished page is the first thing a sponsor sees. Unpublishing puts it back without losing anything.
- Do followers need an account?
- No. An email address is enough for the competition-day heads-up, the event recap and the big moments. Followers who sign in can also get every match score and a reminder before each match, by email, push or Discord DM.
- We already have a site we cannot replace. Is any of this useful?
- The embeds are. Build a block of your rankings, your next match or your sponsor wall and paste one snippet into whatever you are stuck with, including a school CMS you do not control. The configuration is in the link, so nothing has to be hosted or maintained on your end.
Read next
The rest of the toolkit
Team websites is one part of Team HQ.
The roster, the build schedule, your documentation, the money and your public site run on the same free account. Setting it up takes an afternoon.