Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: West Chicago High School Entry Title: Wildcat Chronicle Entry Credit: Gabriella Castro, Ja'Nyah Villa, Alyson Dusing, Miley Pegg, Ruby Guerrero, Ana Hurtado, Juliet Payton, Jason Thunberg, Milly Mora-Zarco, Aaron Hernandez Granados, Caleb Salzman, Joselyn Duran Corona, Leo Mendez, Audrey Rostowsky Judge Comment: Header with the Latest Stories ticker & socials are well placed. Top skinny nav. is a great way to always include about, policies, letters options. Sticky nav with ham menu and scroll to top arrow work well. Main navigation is organized well. Thoughtful design layout and breaking out content on the homepage. Each landing page/section has its own style, which can sometimes be problematic, but in this case is cohesive and done well. SEO elements with internal/external linking, tagging, in-article photos with proper credit/source, alt-text, optimized photos are present. Nice long-form story layout. Accessibility options for multi-language support. Interactivity throughout the site: vlogs, playlists, polls, recent comments module, story likes. Spotlights on artist/athlete of the week, sport events & scores modules, countdown to graduation, current playlist. Work on core web vitals and page load time. Well done, Wildcats!
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Normal Community High School Entry Title: NCHS Inkspot Entry Credit: Audra Wolf, Andrew Naour, Maddie Lane, Arwen Georgas, Brady Phelps, Vidushi Shukla, I'Aria Blackmon, Elijah Conda Judge Comment: Header with social icons and ticker stand out with an organized navigation bar and sticky header on scroll. Nav drop down is nice. Sport results module works well, as does the newsletter sign-up form. Homepage may need some restructuring. Limit the rotator to just one section as they can slow down page load time. Possibly just latest stories in the rotator at the top, then utilize other module options below. Post layout looks consistent and some stories have internal/external links & info boxes, which help SEO. Additionally, try adding tags. Work on optimizing photos & graphics as this can also help with page load time. Good use of multimedia elements: livestream, videos, and podcasts. Good job, NCHS!
