Groupthink: All Files, All Utilites, 1 Webpage
 

Something thats always gotten under my OCD ladden skin is the fact that as strong as this community is, we don't have a centralized place for mods/utilites/files/games/graphics etc.

So I'm throwing this out there. We need to get a centralized site, and host all these various things on 1 place. Who's with me? Who's against me? Who doesnt care?

I've volunteered to set aside a section of our IHOF webspace for such a place before, but nothing ever came of it. The offer still stands, though.

Would this be links to the utilities, or the actual utilities? If the actual utilities, how easy would it be to submit updates? I'd have no problem moving the Extractor, etc over to a centralized place as long as it was easy for me to update them.

It would be great, as I am currently searching this massive site for TCY Helper right now!

If I were hosting it, I'd give developers an individual login to upload their own stuff.

If it were links to utilities, would you not just be as well using the big reference thread?

I would of been willing, but as I would only have 25 megs in my comcast account it would be unfeasable, I think if VPI is willing to do this we should take him up on it. Im sure besides the big utilities there are many things we do in our own games to customize and add a little zing and having the ability to put these files in a centralized place would be a real boon to the community.

Not really. That page is cluttered at best and alot of the links end up going dead.

For instance. I just went thru about 30 minutes of setting up TCY so that all the colleges, bowls, cities and conferences were right. Now, I could the universe files up, send it to VPI and he could put it on our imaginary files page and walla, as long as someone is pointed there or knows where it is, they could just download the zip, extract it and not have to waster 30 minutes. It's the little things.

I'll start coding it if someone else can generate a list of what needs to go up there.

Now this would be cool. I started to take the time to set all this same thing up last night, but am planning to do it later in the week.
Having a place to go and download something like this would be great.

I'm all for this. After purchashing FOF2004 last night, I wanted to get some utilities for it. I found out real quickly alot of the links were dead.

Real Player File
Draft File Editor By 3ric
Fictional Player Universe Generator By HR
Player Files Editor By Lighthousekeeper
CSV Version Of Real Names Player Files
Historical Draft Files
Draft Files Generator By Cap Ologist
FOF2004 Gameplanner By WheelsVT
Third Party Game Plan Creator By Celeval
City Editor Utility By Taco
Basic HTML Converter From WheelsVT
3ric's FOF2004 Play-By-Play Viewer
FOF/TCY HTML Export Utility
FOF Extractor
Primelord's Player Ratings Tracker

Wouldn't it be ideal for us to have 1 standardized location for the board where we could also have a file depository. Whatever happened to the "new board."

I think you might find that few of us have the space / bandwidth to host it; just hosting my facepack files ate up enough bandwidth to get me shut down by my last host.

I would like to see one page that has links to all add-ons, broken down by category, possibly with a brief description of each one. Similar idea to the reference thread, but in a place that can be a little easier to find...

Great idea! I'd like to have customized bitmaps and the various logo sets you use to modify FOF or TCY with on the page.

I have been thinking on doing that for ages, haven't done it yet because lack of time and i'm also worried about some developers etc wanting to host the files themselves or any copyright or "big ego" issues. Else i have the host space and bandwith for it without any problem.

wouldnt the logical choice for all these fine utilities be http://frontofficefootballcentral.com/ ?

Yes, that is another reason why i haven't done it yet, i didn't want to compete with fofc if skydog planned to do it.

The key to a database with utilities and stuff is what VPI and gstelmack said - you have to be able to upload things easily. Where it is hosted is not that important, but you'd get less updates if you'd have to bug Ryan or SD all the time to put things up.

You can setup any portal system like mambo, phpnuke, postnuke etc where some users have rights to upload files, write stuff etc without bugging the site admin. Like i did at http://www.prodeportes.com/dkbl/ or like any portal dedicated to any other game like OOTP etc where the users can upload new roster files, mods etc.

If we can have that (a portal system) for frontofficefootballcentral.com, then it would be ideal.

Because i don't believer there is actual webspace attached to that. It's just a forwarding adress, right?

Well, yes and no. We DO have webspace at the forwarding address (sportplanet.com/fof). However, I'm not sure they'd take kindly to a system where a bunch of people had upload ability, given that they don't even want us to upload attachments on the message board.

However, in the midst of this, there's been an interesting development that could help us out. YoungLife nationally is centralizing all local area websites onto a national server, which means that the site I have at younglifenorthlake.com will be shutting down very soon. (By "very soon", I mean that basically, I could do it tomorrow if I really wanted to. I'm in the "early adopter" program for the new system and have already begun setting up my centralized site.) At any rate, because of the great deal I've got ($10 per month, unlimited bandwidth, 500MB space), I intend to keep that server space for myself for text sim dynasties, screen shots, mirrors, etc. All I need to do is purchase a new domain name (fofutilities.com seems like the most obvious candidate) and point it to the existing server space. I'd be more than happy to allow someone I trust to set up a system like we have at IHOF where anyone can upload stuff, or whatever you think is best. There are two known benefits of using that server space:

1. speed--it hummed even during the release of FOF2K4 when viatech slowed to a crawl
2. unlimited bandwidth--yeah, there have been rumors that they'll give you grief if you go too high, but I've never heard a whiff of trouble from the hosting company--even when we had a whole bunch of people downloading FOF2K4 during the release month. Heck, with the December 2004 patches, FOF2K4 accounted for over 9 Gig of transfer from that server with no repercussions.

Thoughts?

sounds great if it can get set up with developers having access