Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: University of Chicago Laboratory High School Entry Title: uhighmidway.com Entry Credit: Light Dohrn, Kabir Joshi, Sohana Schneider Judge Comment: Layout and design are well organized with dynamic visual elements. Versatile multimedia section. Love that audio is included in some of the stories. Interactive poll and newsletter sign-up are great. Several stories have quotes, internal/external links, tagging, info boxes, photo/graphic optimization with credit/source... all of these are great for SEO. Inline related stories module looks nice, too. Passed core web vitals on desktop so work on passing on mobile. (could be the rotator affecting TTFB and load time) I love the sticky footer with the expanded view on scroll. In-Depth section is well done. Excellent work U-High Midway!
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Kaneland High School Entry Title: Kaneland Krier Website Entry Credit: Krier Staff Judge Comment: Thoughtful homepage layout and sectioning of content. Nice announcements ticker and trending stories & recent results scores modules. Good practice having placeholder images for certain sections. Some stories have internal/external linking and tagging, but try to add more in your featured & news articles. Good versatility in multimedia content. Nice interactive poll and games. I like that you have a contact page and contact removal policy. Consider adding a footer with your contact us, privacy/terms policies, and staff with social media. Work on passing core web vitals. This could be due to image optimization in your rotator. Very nice work, Kaneland!
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Walter Payton High School Entry Title: The Paw Print Entry Credit: Paw Print Staff Judge Comment: Nice homepage layout and header. I like Submit Tips, Op-Eds, and Subscribe links at the top. Nice individual post layout. Consider removing or using a lighter background color behind the featured post image. It seems to compete with the header and the featured image. The right rail (sidebar) is too long so limiting the recent posts module to 3-4 and removing the categories module would help. I like that the posts have share and like button links at the bottom. Adding a multi-media section with some video or audio would be nice for viewer engagement. Nice job tagging and adding internal/external links in stories, which are great for SEO. Good work, Paw Print!
