Why we lost today...
Ah, I've come to the conclusion, it was because I've spent most of the past 7 weeks working on our own independent site. I see some teams have their own sites, but I wanted the premiere one for my gang. So, I built Zamboni Hall, which I thought I'd share a little info with y'all about.
http://www.zambonihall.com/It's a full blown, database driven CMS, using Joomla on the front end, and phpBB3 forums on the back end. Our forums blow anything GLB has out of the water.
Each member gets his own profile page, sort of like a myspace page, where he can put photos, a blog, create a buddies list with members from the other teams in Z Hall, PM and keep track of any forum posts he has.
There is a live chat system, with a regular chat room, and then chat rooms for each specific team for any last minute strategy discussions.
We have our own film room. I noticed that Bort doesn't delete the games played, just the links to them after each season. So, I have a database of each team in the league with links to their games. Pretty handy if new teams or your teams move into different leagues, and you know nothing about your opponent. We missed season one, but all seasons from this point forward will be archived. If a team changes it's name, all I have to do is make that name change in the database, the data for it remains constant.
tpaterniti, who is a MOD here, has 6 teams, GM's 9 more and contributes volumes of articles in the GLB forums, has a player on one of my teams and we're compiling a game guide, player build guide and other info that is scattered across hundreds of forums into one central repository from his input.
We have a Flash Game Arcade. I try and stick a new game in it every day. Some of the games have global scoring, so a lot of the guys get into heated battles of one-upmanship when they log on and see another player has beaten his score. We'll probably be having mini golf tournaments now that our season is over.
News module. Each team can write a news story and submit it, and it goes into the cue on the front page, much like how blogs and other CMS work.
There will probably be about 6-8 teams using it for next season. I have a tremendous amount of loyalty from my guys. When the new teams were created this past season, I was one of the few owners that didn't get decimated with mass player losses. I only lost 2 players out of three teams. My guys kept there players with me, and rostered their own teams separately. As a reward for this loyalty, I'm allowing them to bring their new teams and members into our complex and use the resources.
I still have some work to do on it...the forums have to be templated to match the front end, they're still in the standard phpBB default blue template, and there's some other things I have to tweak here and there, but it's finished now since Sat. and the gang has been moving in all week.
Yes...some of us really are a wee bit obsessive about this game, but as an owner in here, all I have to say is, "eat that Jerry Jones"...lol
Catch y'all later and good luck to those still in the hunt. Maybe next season, with all the resources we now have, I won't be one and done...again.
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