OT - New Website Ideas?

[jemagee]

I'm taking a web site design class this year and we need to have a 'client site' as sort of our over arcing project, and I have a couple of my own ideas I'm not too thrilled with but I could work on...I was wondering if anyone out there had any suggestions.

The two ideas I have are

basketballjourney.com - a sort of meeting ground for 'old school' vs new school basketball folk, with a lot of numbers available for analysis anyway you want - articles - discussions - etc....

tellmewhen.com - i always had this idea of a web site where you would sign up to be 'notified' when your favorite artist (writer, singer, actor, etc...) had something coming out...this was years ago...but it has evolved into my mind as a sort of 'social networking' thing where you could find those with similar tastse, etc...it could also be used by companies (properly) to introduce new artists to groups of fans they think might like the person. (i used to call this infosmash.com but someone took that name)

Both of these site ideas require a lot of back end server side writing and this is a basic design course, so I was wondering if anyone had any creative ideas that might help.

If not, no biggy, just curios to see what kind of sites people might be interested in seeing

[westkoast]

Is it just basic web design?  Or will you also be venturing into dynamic pages and using SQL databases to pull content from?

Both of what you mentioned really requires a database to store this information in.  You may not be getting into that type of web design for the class and trying to create more work for yourself.

[jemagee]

It's a basic class...unfrotunately I have a lot of 'self teaching' in the back of my brain and a lot of database knowledge, so long term i'll want to build dynamic web sites with a lot of server side sql work (like the two ideas listed above)...I just worry that it's too indepth for this introductory class....for instance, the teacher example is an 'about me' web site.

The class syllabus sticks with the basics and assumes no SSI knowledge or prep...i guess i'm going back to the beginning when I already have a 'beginners' knowledge o PHP and mysql (from a summer class i just took)...

That's the reason I posted here, I have ideas for what I know are complex websites (for instance, the basketball web site requires box scores broken down so that you could compare ft attempts for one player at home vs on the road or performance against specific teams from specific divisions while at the some time calculating some of the newer statistics in any model you want)....so i was just looking for simple suggestions if anyone had an idea for a site they might like to see...plus if i ever get into this 'fully', i'll need a portfolio of stuff to show people anyway so  I could use ideas gathered here to develop some prototypes and maybe move forward...never know where stuff might come from

[westkoast]

A site that includes feeds on basketball news from various sites would be cool.  I don't always feel like going to ESPN, then SI, then TrueHoop, etc etc to get all my basketball news.

[jemagee]

A site that includes feeds on basketball news from various sites would be cool.  I don't always feel like going to ESPN, then SI, then TrueHoop, etc etc to get all my basketball news.

I think i could incorporate that into the basketballjourney idea...but don't most of those sites of RSS feeds (I know SI does, hoopshype doesn't seem to, and realgm won't let me read their site )

[westkoast]

A site that includes feeds on basketball news from various sites would be cool.  I don't always feel like going to ESPN, then SI, then TrueHoop, etc etc to get all my basketball news.

I think i could incorporate that into the basketballjourney idea...but don't most of those sites of RSS feeds (I know SI does, hoopshype doesn't seem to, and realgm won't let me read their site )

This site is pretty cool and has an rss feed to add to your idea

http://www.fantasy-news.net/

Though I don't know if they are planning on adding basketball.  Right now it's just baseball and football.

[jemagee]

Yeah, most fantasy sites focus on baseball and football cause it's where the cash is

i was thinking about doing some sort of 'basketball pool' competition similar to what espn / yahoo do with pick the winners, but i'm not sure how it works cause there are so many games....maybe pick 5-10 per week...i'm workig it out in my head as a database thought experiment

[westkoast]

Yeah, most fantasy sites focus on baseball and football cause it's where the cash is

i was thinking about doing some sort of 'basketball pool' competition similar to what espn / yahoo do with pick the winners, but i'm not sure how it works cause there are so many games....maybe pick 5-10 per week...i'm workig it out in my head as a database thought experiment

You could always limit it to the nationally televised games I guess.  Though there are not nearly as many at the start of the season when football is still on as the end.  You get Tuesday ESPN, Thursday TNT, and Sunday ABC.

[jemagee]

Hmmm....that's an idea.

I was thinking a once of week kind of thing, like setting your fantasy roster....pick 10 games, get a point per game, have standings...of course prizes would be required, but i'm not sure there'd be a market for it in basketball...i think there might be a 'bigger' market if you did it with college basketball but then you have so many fracking games

[westkoast]

Hmmm....that's an idea.

I was thinking a once of week kind of thing, like setting your fantasy roster....pick 10 games, get a point per game, have standings...of course prizes would be required, but i'm not sure there'd be a market for it in basketball...i think there might be a 'bigger' market if you did it with college basketball but then you have so many fracking games

I wish there was like a suicide style game for basketball but it just wouldn't work

[jemagee]

I wish there was like a suicide style game for basketball but it just wouldn't work

Too many games too many days...you could have a weekly contest and the lowest score each week is booted from the game...maybe set all your picks the Sunday before and add confidence, 10 games or so...maybe more.

It's doable and maybe we could come up with something for this season as a test, I wouldn't mind playing and or running 'support' for it. 

(Im also interested in an 'alternative' fantasy basketball game that takes into account some of the newer numbers out there...instead of 3 pointers made, why not factor in your teams TS%, or work out the per rating for your team each week)

[WayOutWest]

If not, no biggy, just curios to see what kind of sites people might be interested in seeing

One thing that I found interesting was the weekly breakdowns and analysis of the performance of our fantasy league teams.  If you check out the other board on this site you can get an idea of what that involved.  The problem was the guys didn't always have time to do the number crunching and analysis.  I would be nice if those numbers could be auto-entered and crunched.

[jemagee]

If not, no biggy, just curios to see what kind of sites people might be interested in seeing

One thing that I found interesting was the weekly breakdowns and analysis of the performance of our fantasy league teams.  If you check out the other board on this site you can get an idea of what that involved.  The problem was the guys didn't always have time to do the number crunching and analysis.  I would be nice if those numbers could be auto-entered and crunched.

I like that idea going forward, I like the idea of the alternative fantasy basketball as well, which would require the weekly number crunching as well...it would work because on a grander scale I want to make box score data easier to read, download, and analyze as compared to other web sites, so all the games would be in the database as well

[westkoast]

I talked to the guy who runs fantasy-news.net and he is going to add that to the site for basketball once the pre-season starts...i asked him if we would be able to track our own fantasy players/teams on the site and he said he's working on it currently.

For you fantasy football buffs that site is pretty sweet, I have to say.  They just added a trade analyzer.