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About

Hello, and welcome to GearLink! GearLink is a robotics-focused social platform created by FIRST Tech Challenge team NEMO 21890 in 2025. We wanted to create a medium for connecting with fellow teams and others involved in robotics around the world that was as robust as existing social sites and apps but without some of their biggest downsides. GearLink supports 15 different languages and includes many great features to connect with others in the community without undesirable traits like addictive and algorithm-based content, toxic and profane speech and behavior, and negative motives to name a few. Our goal isn’t for you to stay on our website as long as possible and see ads, and we aren’t trying to make money -- we just want to get to know the community even better, learn from everything it has to share, and provide a safe and positive place for people to learn, interact, and get involved with robotics. To ensure things are this way, some measures we’ve taken include that profane language is censored, new users and groups are validated by an administrator, and administrators regularly check for concerns and issues on the site.

           If you ever encounter any bugs with the site, have some feedback, or have an idea for an addition to the site, we really want to hear from you!! Fill out the form here to let us know: https://gearlink.online/forms/tell-us. On the same note, if you ever see any posted content on the site that you think is inappropriate or concerns you, please click “Report” on the post and we will address it as it is not tolerated on the website.

           In the spirit of being open source, here’s a few notes on how GearLink was made: The core of the site is centered around the open source social networking engine Elgg. This website would truly not be possible without it. Thanks also goes to some of the wonderful people in the Elgg community who created plugins which variations of are implemented on this site.

           All in all, we cannot thank you enough for your presence on GearLink.online and we hope you can help us make it a tool that the robotics community will strongly benefit from. Your support and contributions through use of the site and sharing it with others will make this resource available to and impactful on the world. We can’t wait to see what you post on the site!

 

With great appreciation,

NEMO 21890

 

Get to know some ways to use the main features of GearLink:

  • Blogs - Create blog posts to share your or your team’s story.
  • Posts - Create quicker posts with an image and/or a caption. You can also share other kinds of files in posts like videos, code, PDFs, ZIP files, CAD files, and more!
  • Discussions - Create new discussion topics or add your input to an existing one. It’s a perfect place to get questions answered, feedback, tips, or just chat.
  • Groups - Connect with more specific sections of the community, such as those within your competition, nearby location, interests. Additionally, private groups can be used to communicate and share within teams.
  • Pages - Create wiki-like pages that others can edit and collaborate on if you choose to allow so. A great place for community guides and instructions for competitions, parts, programs, and more!
  • Events - Share events you’re hosting! Use events to create a sign up for your workshop or tell the community about your local social or scrimmage.
  • Bulletin board - A one-stop place to see teams that are recruiting. Great for those looking to join a team to see what teams are looking for a new member, and great for teams who need an addition and want to advertise themselves to the community.
  • Messaging - Send email-like messages to other users within the website.
  • Friending - Send friend requests to and accept them from other users. You can view content exclusively from accounts you’ve friended under “Friends” views for each content type.
  • A note: Some content from other sites, such as Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram, can be automatically embedded into what you post! Just paste the URL into a field and ensure that the link is not clickable (if it is, click on the link and click the little “X” icon).
  • Another note: Emails (like for email user validation) may be a little bit slow -- we appreciate your patience!