League Web Pages

[TheMeat]

So I'm pretty interested in making a web site for my small MP league and have several questions:

If this is an appropriate forum to ask in, what free webhosts are good, with minimal advertising and such distractions? And I've got very minimal experience with website design, so is this a good place to post all the dumb questions I'm goin to have as I try to figure this out? and any tips and how to best tweak the HTML that FOF generates, like a better color scheme, or templates to use with it and whatnot would be greatly appreciated.

[cuervo72]

Well, as far as color schemes go, the game html uses the in-game colors for team pages, and for league pages it uses the color scheme in use when the html is generated. So if you're the commish you might choose a team with a red/white/blue scheme when generating the html.

Beyond that, unfortunately there's not a whole lot you can do unless you rebuild the pages or have some sort of parsing script. The html hard-codes colors in font and table tags rather than using css so it's not easy to change things. For FOFL I've made a script to be run on the server to strip out some tags in the box score, replacing them with styles. The styles themselves are generated from a db though.

[Matthean]

As a person who was a mod on a web dev forum at one point, the HTML that the game produces makes me cringe a lot. To me, it would be easier to extract whatever data you want from the game and then create the web pages from scratch. Trying to weed through Jim's markup is just :banghead: I do have some ideas for better web page formatting templates, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

[ShaneTheMaster]

I wouldn't use a free web host - in the USFL, up until our current host (EasyCGI), we have had many problems with web hosts (and they were not free). I highly recommend using EasyCGI - we have had very little issues with them since moving to them.

[TheMeat]

Ok, I was looking at some paid services anyway, for pretty cheap since the free hosts don't give much disk space at all, lunarpages was recommended but I'll check out your suggestion too. Thanks :)

So there's no easy way to just use a standard color format? the web pages for all these big MP leagues are all done the hard way? That sucks big cuz I have not nearly enough time or knowledge to make any parser or anything so I get I'll just keep it ugly ;).

[Matthean]

I've also use iPowerWeb and A Small Orange. Here (http://www.businesshostingprovider.com/top-ten-list.htm) is a list of top ten web host. Granted, it seems like a very large number of web design people use DreamHost so top 10 is subjective.

[ShaneTheMaster]

Ok, I was looking at some paid services anyway, for pretty cheap since the free hosts don't give much disk space at all, lunarpages was recommended but I'll check out your suggestion too. Thanks :)

So there's no easy way to just use a standard color format? the web pages for all these big MP leagues are all done the hard way? That sucks big cuz I have not nearly enough time or knowledge to make any parser or anything so I get I'll just keep it ugly ;).

Your best bet is to use Greg Stelmack's utilities to grab data into a database, and write your own stuff (using PHP or ASP.NET) to read from that database. I use it for our stuff (at www.fof-usfl.net (http://www.fof-usfl.net)), it is real easy to work with.

[Yoda]

As a person who was a mod on a web dev forum at one point, the HTML that the game produces makes me cringe a lot. To me, it would be easier to extract whatever data you want from the game and then create the web pages from scratch. Trying to weed through Jim's markup is just :banghead: I do have some ideas for better web page formatting templates, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

Hmmm, have you actually read through it?

The HTML created by the game repeats itself alot and once cleaned up with CSS, isn't that bad. Though, depending on your webskills, using the utilities in stelmacks suite make things easier.

[TheMeat]

Skills eh? Although I've read an old copy of HTML for dummies, and the first half of an intro textbook for PHP, it's been a couple years and I've never really had a worthwhile purpose for building a webpage, so I just never did but it fascinates me. I have also fooled around some in Frontpage and Dreamweaver. So if a guy like me, and a guy like me is a fast learner, were to set out to take some php tutorials or something, where should I start, what specifically will I need to start posting some stats n such to the website? For now I'm going to fool around just making an intro page for the league, and monkeying some photoshopped pics of my players doing heroic things with footballs :)

Speaking of which, I had this idea that maybe I could get a frame out of a madden replay, if I made a player with the proper name and number... I seem to remember seeing this done already... How hard/easy is this? I mean specifically to get the game image into photoshop. I might answer my own question by trying it in madden now but tips from anyone that's tried are, as always, appreciated.

[Matthean]

Hmmm, have you actually read through it?

The HTML created by the game repeats itself alot and once cleaned up with CSS, isn't that bad. Though, depending on your webskills, using the utilities in stelmacks suite make things easier.

Yeah, I've weeded through the code and still come away with the same feeling. It's simply not worth it to turn the HTML pages that the games produces to something I would use. I would rather grab the data from stelmacks suite and just go from there.

[3ric]

Speaking of which, I had this idea that maybe I could get a frame out of a madden replay, if I made a player with the proper name and number... I seem to remember seeing this done already... How hard/easy is this? I mean specifically to get the game image into photoshop. I might answer my own question by trying it in madden now but tips from anyone that's tried are, as always, appreciated.

The StelmackSoft Suite has a "Maddenator" utility that creates Madden rosters from the FOF rosters. Then you can easily take screenshots from Madden for your web site.


http://www.fof-ihof.com/player/playerphoto.php?playerid=10691
http://www.fof-ihof.com/player/playerphoto.php?playerid=10691

[TheMeat]

Thanks Shane, I like your page for the Usfl, quite like I'm trying to do, just simple stuff with some dynamic content, write ups and such. So I'm going to find a php tutorial and get started.

So where exactly should I be looking to start with php? Basically what I'm looking to start with is a front page with some links to some content, and a news feed type of center column like you have. Any quick way of explaining exactly what kind of tutorial I need or just start at day 1 stuff?

[ShaneTheMaster]

Thanks Shane, I like your page for the Usfl, quite like I'm trying to do, just simple stuff with some dynamic content, write ups and such. So I'm going to find a php tutorial and get started.

So where exactly should I be looking to start with php? Basically what I'm looking to start with is a front page with some links to some content, and a news feed type of center column like you have. Any quick way of explaining exactly what kind of tutorial I need or just start at day 1 stuff?

Thanks for the compliment. Actually, I made our site with ASP.NET. There many books on PHP that you can get from online book stores (including a dummy book). Most (if not all) of the other FOF sites are made using PHP, maybe someone from one of those sites can get you some sample code.

[Scarecrow]

What the hell????


Just go to www.theFOFL.com (http://www.theFOFL.com) and copy it.

[gstelmack]

The StelmackSoft Suite has a "Maddenator" utility that creates Madden rosters from the FOF rosters. Then you can easily take screenshots from Madden for your web site.

To be specific, it updates Madden rosters from the FOF rosters. You have to go into Madden and create the teams with the correct city names / nicknames, set up the graphics you want, and make sure they have enough players (Madden likes to create 52-player rosters). Then you can run Extractor followed by Maddenator to have it stuff your FOF players in there for screenshot-taking.