Hosting an OOTP League

[Chas in Cinti]

Anyone have experience with hosting a league? I'm not a web guy, but I have a few HS friends and I that are doing a league... I'm not sure where to host, if there are templates for a website, etc...

Any thoughts, here?

[Huckleberry]

If you're all high school friends, do you actually need a website or can you just play it in OOTP and chat in whatever software/app you're using now? Or do you want to see the HTML reports in your browser? There are lots of different levels of complexity depending on what you're trying to accomplish. My league(s) are here:

World Baseball Association

But we have a forum, Slack group, etc. and lots of that may be completely unnecessary for you. It also costs money (server host, etc.).

[Chas in Cinti]

I'm in my mid-40s and these guys live all over the country... we're planning on doing the file export/import... week at a time type of thing...

[Chas in Cinti]

So looking at your site... did you design all of that, or does it come with whatever service you use? what is the service?

[Huckleberry]

I designed it in terms of adjusting templates. The basic forum is free here:

Simple Machines Forum - Free & open source community software

Then I downloaded some mods and had to edit some source files to change the menus at the top and other little things like that. I also wrote some custom PHP pages and scripts for my league but you won't need to do that. I also used the SimplePortal SMF mod here:

SimplePortal

That's the only one I think is absolutely necessary for what I have going on. Helps you tweak the layout, etc.

Other than that for just hosting I use HostMonster. Getting the actual server space and name may be pretty cheap if you're only using it for the file storage and transfer. I haven't looked in a really long time.

[Chas in Cinti]

welp, you lost me... I have no idea what any of what you said means...

other than the hosting, i think i get that... but I'm not sure what you mean by "downloaded some mods", and everything after that...

So there isn't anything plug and play?...

[Huckleberry]

All that other stuff is just specifically how I set up my site using that free forum software and mods for the forum.

You will need a web host and will need to know how to use FTP and set up the online league information inside OOTP. That involves FTP server info, passwords, etc. I'm sure there are options out there to make it easier for OOTP leagues but I didn't find any with a quick search.

[Chas in Cinti]

Ok... sorry to be dense, I work for a technology company, so you'd think I could figure this out. I've not done any website work since... '95? LOL

[QB10]

Originally Posted by Chas in Cinti

Ok... sorry to be dense, I work for a technology company, so you'd think I could figure this out. I've not done any website work since... '95? LOL

I'm in the exact same boat -- I work for a technology company and designed websites in the late '90s. I'm similarly frustrated that this seems hard...

I'm looking to host an FOF league and an OOTP league with a couple of family members.

I've seen that some folks have figured out how to use Dropbox for this, but I'm having trouble finding clear instructions. Could anyone offer tips here?

I'd be fine going the webhosting route, but this seems like overkill for my scenario. That said, I'm happy to pay if it eases my frustration Does anyone prefer a specific platform that works for both FOF and OOTP?

Chas -- not meaning to hijack. I hope we can both get an assist here.

[Chas in Cinti]

no worries... I've been messing with Filezilla to turn my home laptop into an FTP server, testing that out now... but I'm only about 20% confident and it took me 2 hours to get to this point...