Interactive Online League Directory

[kq76]

The Interactive Online League Directory (IOLD) is a listing of online leagues that is added to and updated by you.

Want to find a league to join that fits certain criteria? Check the IOLD. Want to check something out about a league you once read about? Check the IOLD. Curious about how many leagues there are of a certain type? Check the IOLD. Want another way to advertise your league? Add it to the IOLD, all on your own!

The IOLD is now hosted at jazz's site and brief instructions can be found on each page.

If you have an issue concerning an existing league (need a password?), please include both the league's initials and ID# in your post so we don't have to search for it first to make sure that we're talking about the same league.

[kq76]

Alexa is now charging for their website preview images and I couldn't easily get Thumbshots' service to work so I disabled that feature. The good news is the pages load faster without those images.

(bump)

[robster1225]

This is a great site. I need to add my leagues.

What ever happened to the Online League Server. Did OOTP just scrap the idea? I think it would be awesome for them to bring it back.

[kq76]

Thanks.

I don't think anything has happened to the OLS. Its site is still at: http://www.ootp-leagues.com/index.shtml and a post about it is at: Online League Server Policy. Unless something has changed, Andreas still administers it.

If you're asking about the old directory that was at the OLS site, I got permission to merge it with my old excel directory to create the IOLD and because the OLS one didn't really offer anything more than the IOLD, it was removed from the site in favour of links to the IOLD.

[robster1225]

So they still host leagues?
It is something I would look into if it is still available. But the site doesn't look like it's been updated since version 5.

[kq76]

Well, sites are still using the OLS and if Andreas changed their policy to not add anymore new leagues he probably would have posted something about it which I haven't seen. Some parts of the site have been updated since OOTP5 (I know, I tweaked the menu for Andreas), but I don't think Andreas saw much need to change the logo or anything. Go ahead and read that post I linked above as its probably the most up-to-date and see if it's for you.

[robster1225]

I read the post.
I just figured that they would have advertised this since the new version came out, but they havent.
But it makes sense that they don't need to change anything.

[molarmite]

Does this still work or something else like it?

[kq76]

Hmm, I thought it worked, but I just tried the link and now I see the 404 error. I'll try to find out what happened and get it back up. I'll post when I do. Thanks for letting me know about the problem!

[molarmite]

No problem.

[kq76]

Well, I can't even ftp into it so I can't do much. I emailed Andreas. He can probably help, but it might be awhile.

[molarmite]

Just post in here when it's back up.

[kq76]

It's back up. Thanks Andreas!

[kq76]

With the release of v2007, it would be nice to get as many as possible of the league records in the IOLD updated. If you need a reset password to update a league and you're that league's commish, post and I'll try to get it to you asap. If you're not the commish, but would still like something to be updated, post and I'll get to it eventually.

[kq76]

Request for Help with the IOLD

Two things:

1) I'm looking for 3 or so people who wouldn't mind spending say a couple nights every month or so adding and updating records in the IOLD. It wasn't too much of a burden on me when there were only a hundred leagues or so in it, but we're approaching 500 now and with 3 different boards of leagues now it's getting difficult to try to keep it as up-to-date as I would like. I can easily handle the requests for reset passwords and what not, but I just don't have nearly the time I'd like to spend going through threads adding and updating leagues. Even if I didn't update it myself at all, it would still be somewhat useful, just not as useful as it could be. So that's what I would like from someone. I wouldn't exactly call it fun, but it can definitely be interesting at times as you do end up finding out a considerable amount about all the leagues and its members out there.

What I normally do is after a couple weeks or so I start at the bottom of a board's front page, click on a thread, skim it, see if it is in the IOLD already. If it is, I see if it could do with an update (most frequent is a change in the latest season, but changes in site address and commish are not uncommon) and if so, make the update. If it's not already in the IOLD, I add it with as much of the most basic info as I can easily find (I usually don't bother with stuff like financials and modifiers, but I try to get things like player type, version used, contact info, etc). It's not uncommon that I'll google the commish's forum username or AIM ID looking for a real name and email address. Sometimes if it looks like the league might already be in the IOLD, but I'm not sure (same or similar league name, but the site address is different and the old one no longer exists), I'll check the old site address with webarchive.org, go through the league's previous champions listing or its members list and if they match up pretty well I'll consider it the same league, move the site address to the old site address field and update it with the new address. If a league is defunct, all I do is set it to defunct as I don't think most of the rest matters all that much to most at that point.

Along with the thanks of myself and the community, you'll get an admin password, but you won't get to see passwords users create (not even I do as they're hashed). I'm going to prefer people I know and trust as even though backups are made and I automatically get sent emails of changes, I don't want to have to worry about maybe having to deal with any major problems. It would probably also be an asset if you've been in a number of online leagues so that you'll be familiar with where you can usually find information. As long as you're comfortable with working with the IOLD as a general user and are adept at searching for information, though, you won't need any further technical knowledge. I might give you access to the site's phpmyadmin in time, but you don't need to know how to use that. Anyway, if you wouldn't mind helping me out a bit with this, let me know.

2) I'd like to consider moving the IOLD somewhere else. It's currently hosted by OOTP, but Andreas took away ftp access some time ago and whenever I make changes to the files now, I find it a major pain going through so many hoops to change them. It's not frequent that changes are made, but when they are it's not as quick and easy as I'd like. If you wouldn't mind hosting it, let me know. I don't want someone to actually buy space for it though. I'll only consider an offer from someone who has hosting for something else anyway and this wouldn't cost them anything extra. Space and bandwidth most likely won't be an issue (all the somewhat lengthy email notifications I get of spam attempts the IOLD gets might be, but I can turn that off or just log them as they probably should be anyway). I would need a mysql database, though, with ftp access. It would probably be best if I had my own subdomain or folder without access to your stuff so that if you did have a problem that there was no question that it could have been me. So yeah, if you think you can offer this, that would be great. I can't say I'd take you up on it, but it'd be great to know there are options out there. I'd also have to ask Andreas because I can't remember if we made any deals implicitly or explicitly that it had to be hosted by them.