Amazing OOTP Online League websites...

[snnort]

How well a league is run and how involved the collective GMs are in a league generally makes for the best online league experience...

.. BUT I am interested in looking at some TOP NOTCH league websites. I'm talking about the creme of the crop. The top 1% best looking and user intuitive league sites. A website that makes you look at it and drop your jaw. Features (CMS is awesome) as well as graphics and crisp, professional layout is a must.

I'm not necessarily looking for any leagues with openings (which is why I did not post this thread in the OOTPB Online League Listing section)... just stunning websites.

Anyone have any they can list?

[mikev]

not the GUBAs :lol:

We are pretty much 100% forum based

The TTBL has a pretty cool phpnuke based site.

[Corsairs]

Those are some pretty high standards and I'm not going to even pretend that our website meets all your requirements, but I'm pretty pleased with PEBA's website. It's not even remotely flashy, but I find it to be functional and reasonably attractive (and that's a lot more important to me, personally). There are handy interfaces for owners to submit news stories or moves for the upcoming sim (when they don't have access to the game). Again, fairly simple but (IMO) fairly easy on the eyes.

[snnort]

I have some idea's for a few layouts... I'm highly leaning towards a CMS of some sort... I was heavily involved in the CDBL and BCBL (Crash Davis and Billy Chapel)... the dying out came with the release of OOTP 2006 and getting people to move away from 6.5 mostly due to workload of the simmer. At the time, no one wanted to move away from 6.5... but the simming procedures were pretty time consuming.

With OOTP8 I'm in a league, but not running one anymore... but it's obvious that with all the help and automation included in OOTP8... I'm considering bringing back the BCBL... but part of the CDBL/BCBL was maintaining a premo website.

I am not a fan of sites in which the entire background is run by MySQL which most CMS packages require. But I'm not seeing a way around that.

Perl/CGI based CMS is (IMO) quicker and easier to manage with less the 50 regular users... but I'm having a hard time finding any.

The former BCBL website was a patch work of HTML/CSS frontpage, with a backend of Coronto for news and a YaBB forum and BOSI... that required THREE (3) different logins for forum, news writing, and BOSI.

IF I use a good CMS for the new site (Drupel, Joomla, or phpNuke) then the only other login required would be for the OOTPOnlineUtilitites suite.

BUT also important to me is getting everything to LOOK GOOD. Amazing. Like ESPN's Baseball frontpage.

[udbacker58]

I think the USBA and eMLB are top notch. But I may be biased

[kagnew35]

For eye appeal, look over my soxxcountry.com, its just newly upgraded and still under construction, but I like the templates a lot. Mambo, PHPBB3 and Parachat live commercial chat room

[snnort]

Originally Posted by udbacker58

I think the USBA and eMLB are top notch. But I may be biased

Those sites were fairly impressive. The layout was definitely in the top 5% of what you see of Sim League sites. So I am guessing that 34 Productions either created the site initially OR a template was taken from them? It looks nice.

Looking at the other sites (Portfolio) that 34 Productions has done... a few were made with WordPress. Very cool.

I'd love to see more OOTP sites like these two.

At this point I will MOST DEFINITELY be using Drupal after researching CMS suites once more (did a few years back as well). Drupal seems to have an amazing amount of features, a large support community, and a strong emphasis on security.

Bring on more peeps. Let's inspire the OOTP community to make more sharp looking sites that still have that intuitive interface that every good league needs to be one of the best.

[Icy]

The TheFOBL has a great website and also nice fictional logos and unis.

[snnort]

Originally Posted by Icy

The TheFOBL has a great website and also nice fictional logos and unis.

Yes. Same basic design as udbacker's links... same design guy too (34 Productions). Looks like they have a few sim leagues on a "network."

Originally Posted by udbacker58

I think the USBA and eMLB are top notch. But I may be biased

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by snnort

Yes. Same basic design as udbacker's links... same design guy too (34 Productions). Looks like they have a few sim leagues on a "network."

Simms might drop by.

[Simms]

*waves*

Thanks for the kind words. The FOBL site (I've been commish for almost 7 years) was my original playground ... the current version is really the third major redesign, and I'm happy enough with it that I hope I don't do another one for a while. The FOFL (our sister football league) uses the same basic template, but I designed it with FOBL in mind, certainly. That said, I've been slacking on making a lot of site updates on the FOBL site ... the football league is almost entirely database-driven at this point, and is maintained by one of our other owners.

34 Productions was really born from working on FOBL ... in that I found I liked web design and started a small freelancing operation. I have a variety of small business clients, and generally don't do much for other sport sim sites, but TSW is the exception. A while back, Mark Cooley approached me about redesigning gridiron-glory net, which I did (Gridiron Glory ... College Football at its Finest!). After that, I really just supplied Mark with the graphic mockup template, and he's been able to take that template and use the same basic code for a number of other sites (eMLB and USBA included). It's really an impressive network Mark's got going, but my involvement beyond the initial redesign (g-g.net) has been minimal.

Cheers,
Simms

[mikev]

So, um, who wants to help me out and make a super cool league homepage like that for the GUBA?

Those are awesome, and I suck at HTML.

[snnort]

You did good Simms.

You've seen my post. I plan on bringing Drupal into the back end to allow for one login for news/update peeps without the need for a second login for tracking polls OR getting on the forum.

I remember with the CDBL (when we used OOTP 6.5)... there was a forum login, a news piece login, and a BOSI login. Three user name and passwords. Even if they were all the same, you had to do it three time. I'd like to cut that down if I can... and make it easier for GMs to participate more.

The difficult part is building a template in Drupal that will have the site looking PREMO... like espn.com.

I'll keep updating this thread as things progess.

But I still want to see other sites if someone has done a super job.

[snnort]

Originally Posted by mikev

So, um, who wants to help me out and make a super cool league homepage like that for the GUBA?

Those are awesome, and I suck at HTML.

Part of the reason Simms did a good job is there is a LOT more to the site than HTML. There is CSS in there to keep things consistent and color things more efficiently. There is PHP and Javascript in there to up the "usability" factor in the site.

I may be willing to help... but it will have to wait until AFTER I get my site up.

In my case I'll be also adding in the MySQL Database in the BG, plus a bit of Adobe Flash content (on a small scale) just to crank up the wow factor a bit.

I too do this for a living and it's funny that when I try something new (in this case, Drupal) it's usually for a sim league and then once I've "mastered" it there (if that is possible) then I take it to my clients to make money with the new knowledge.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

Those are some pretty high standards and I'm not going to even pretend that our website meets all your requirements, but I'm pretty pleased with PEBA's website. It's not even remotely flashy, but I find it to be functional and reasonably attractive (and that's a lot more important to me, personally). There are handy interfaces for owners to submit news stories or moves for the upcoming sim (when they don't have access to the game). Again, fairly simple but (IMO) fairly easy on the eyes.

Very nice, functional and interesting website.

And as you say, it is very easy on the eyes.

[snnort]

Now that the new "Commissioners Corner" section/forum of this message board has been created... it might be beneficial for a moderator to move this thread to that area of the message board (just created this morning, thanks Markus!!).

[D's Nuts]

For a site that uses "only" HTML, I like our league home ... Pine Tar and Rosin Baseball League

[Emrys]

Backyard Baseball League is a Community Server based site. I wouldn't put it anywhere near the top of sites, as I've seen some great ones just in this thread.

I'd recommend Community Server though...it's pretty easy to manage, and if you're a developer, it's easy to develop little plug-ins and addons.

[thomamon]

I run a league that just converted from OOTP 6.5 to OOTP 8. We have an awesome website, or we did before we converted. The utilities we had on the front page don't work at the moment. But we did have a system that is pretty unique to our site where out PHPBB news stories would come up on the front page(an owner from our league wrote the utility).

Check it out at:

Welcome to APBL!

[perezh]

A plug for a website that I think is incredibly deserving...that of the Hickory Baseball League of which I am a part. This past offseason, the site received a major overhaul and looks and operates beautifully in just about every capacity. The site I don't think can fully be classified as "finished" (developmental reports, for instance, were added five or six sims ago), but as it is now, it's among the best league sites I've ever seen.

HBLBASEBALL.COM :: Hickory Baseball League

--Simming schedule
--Up to date, automated standings and league leaders
--Amateur Draft built into site login
--Developmental Reports
--Great news system
--Aesthetically pleasing