Status Update For Leagues Using My Web Front End (TFL, USFL, GEFL, GEFL2, HFL)

[Ben E Lou]

Rather than trying to post in multiple places, I thought I'd put this info in one place to avoid misinformation/misunderstanding. In short, I'm writing to let everyone know that I won't be able to provide continued web front-end support for leagues that I'm not in.

This isn't out of a lack of desire to do so; it's simply that I don't have the time to recode everything that needs to be recoded in the amount of time in which it needs to be done. Your leagues have paid shared hosting costs with me through the end of this month. I can't ask you to pay your share for me to host databases that are becoming useless as people convert to FOF7. (Your databases were maintained using DBUpdater, which read data directly from the FOF game files and wrote it to a database. Because the structure of the data has changed somewhat, DBUpdater no longer works.) I know that TFL and HFL have already converted, and I assume the other three will be converting some time soon.

The good news is that I have released a database updating tool that these leagues (and any others) can use to create and maintain databases on their own. I've been using it myself for roughly a month now. It doesn't provide any front-end tools, but it sets up and maintains an infrastructure that someone can use to provide php/MySQL sites like the ones that I do.

But having a web site like the ones I've done for y'all requires two main components: a league database that house all of your league's data, and code (written in php in this case) that reads from the league database and displays it in your web browser. Because the database structure is different now, basically every single bit of code I wrote for the FOF2K7 databases has to be rewritten to some degree. Since the release of FOF7, I have put in dozens (maybe hundreds) of hours recoding stuff for just the leagues that I'm in, and I'm nowhere near being done with that process. So near the end of this month, I'll be downsizing my server greatly and just housing the CCFL, GML, and WOOF there. The USFL and GEFL2 also have their forums on my server. I'll be contacting those commishes to see if they want to share some hosting costs with me and keep their forums on my servers, or just go out on their own.

It is most certainly possible that at some point in the future I'll be able to take on the task of setting up databases for other leagues and providing code, but for now, time just isn't going to allow that. Sorry to have to be the bearer of news that will probably disappoint some of you.

--Ben