Basketball site revamp?

[TheTuchMan]

I had an idea about a way to stir up interest within the students, a possible site revamp for UMassHoops? Personally, I love coming to the site and reading on the message boards. However, I realized a problem. Whenever I come to the site, I immediatley click on the message boards. For first time visitors or casual fans, they may not immediatley go to the boards and browse through the site first. Problem is, the site seems somewhat outdated and looks like its from the 90s. Has anyone considered possibly updating the layout of the site and its content so that the board is more integrated in the site? I think that maybe a community effort to revamp the web site could help inspire interest in the team.

Personally, I would be very interested in becoming involved to help with the site, and im sure there are others that would want to help out too. Plus, it puts less pressure on the moderators to continually update the site by themselves.

Just an idea, but I think we could pull it off.

[MikeUMA]

Plus, it puts less pressure on the moderators to continually update the site by themselves.

Moderator - singular. This is a one man show. But the guy known as "jj" gets a lot of credit for keeping the server going. Without his help this place would be much worse, or much more costly, than it is.

Anyway, I hear what you're saying, Tuch, and I agree that the place is in need of a facelift. But, some reasons why that hasn't happened yet...
1. This site is my hobby. Other things in life (wife, baby, job, etc) take priority. Don't have time to do everything I'd like to do.
2. I'm not a programmer by nature. That's why this site is very low tech.
3. I don't have cool software tools to spruce up the design / functionality. I'd be all for it, but haven't had time to evaluate all my options.
4. I'm a control freak. If people want to help add/maintain content, great, but the control freak in me gets nervous.

Again, there are lots of things that I'd like to do, especially with site functionality and historical stats, but haven't gotten around to it.

[TheTuchMan]

Yeah I understand that. I know a god bit about web design and might be able to help out if you want. Theoretically, once the new software is up on the server, you will have the same control over the site. Take a look at this site http://www.vbulletin.com/. I used this software on a website I used to run and I loved it. You wont have to pay for it either since I have the software already, you can consider that my donation to the site .

Let me know what you think.

[Quinn]

Mike,

There are a number of real easy options for you to consider that might actually make your tasks much easier.

For instance, you could make a switch over to blogger or Wordpress and the site then becomes template driven. So you spend some time on day 1 setting up a design that works for you (could even utilize help from people on this site).

After that, it's all real easy to make content updates. It would be like having a navigation bar that would point to specific articles like News, Scoreboard, Schedule, Roster, Tickets, alumni, Recruiting. For News, Recruiting, etc, it just means putting in a "category" marker for those categories and BAM, those pages are updated.

The forums would then have the same navigation bar and UmassHoops.com would be 1 combined site rather than what was originally mentioned as almost 2 separate sites.

I threw something together similar to what I discussed above. It's nothing pretty, quite choppy, but real easy to manage. Everything is done via blogger with the exception of the forums. I only kept the forum directory as it was because those pages are rank so high on the SERPs and generate hundreds of thousands of visits each year.

Like I said, it ain't pretty but it requires only 5-10 minutes per week on Blogger outside of the time I spend on the fourms: http://collegesportsinfo.com/


There are so many templates out there to chose from to start with and then just make some code changes on your own. The good news is that Blogger uses the "layouts" so you just drag and drop whole sections to where you want them to go.

I like many others would help out anyway you need with any design type work. You can also add some of your trusted members as site contributors who could add content on their own that only goes live when you approve it.

[TheTuchMan]

^

Completly agree, I think we could pull this off!

[Floyd]

What's wrong with it now? Works for me

[eXelwood]

I am quite happy with the site as is. My main usage is this message board and the hoops page with occasional visits to the other sports specific pages.

I appreciate all the work Mike , and "jj", do to keep it up and will contribute again when I get a job. I like the moderation .

[CrooksisRhyming]

Hey Mike, not sure how much of a pain this is, but can you possibly take down the Dayton Asskicking from the main page? If it's too much, I understand. It just bums me.


How about that picture of Molnar where UMass obviously photoshopped a UMass polo on him?

[MikeUMA]

Updated the old "home page", took down the Dayton mention, and referenced the new Wiki content. But unless you had some sort of hardcoded bookmark, you should have been seeing the new splash page about the change to the Wiki style. Were you not seeing that splash page?

[Crank]

Not sure where else to put this Mike, but it might be time to retire the "One of the best in 1-AA" subtitle for the football board!

[MikeUMA]

^
Good catch, I'll change that.

[Floyd]

Since it's a new year, it's a good time to throw Mike a bone for running this site and acknowledge jj and others who take their time to give us all a place to follow Minutemen sports & talk crap to each other. Thanks mike, jj and the other moderators!