DTBL News

The new main page is here!  It was a long time coming and I still have a lot of work to do, but at least I have something to show you just in time for Opening Day.  A few notes about what you are seeing…

First of all, this main page is literally the only thing that has changed so far.  Every other page continues to use the same code, style and images.  Eventually, these pages will be replaced with something that looks similar to the main page, but I’ll be tackling them one at a time.

Next, several of the links in the menu either don’t work or are simply placeholders for pages that don’t exist yet.  Specifically, there are two sub-menus that list all 10 teams:  Team Pages and Stats.  Currently, these take you to the same place:  the old team stats pages.  Eventually, “Team Pages” will point to a brand new feature of the site, which will be pages for each team containing all sorts of information besides just rosters/stats.  This is the part of the site I will be working on next, so hopefully I’ll have something ready to go in the next couple weeks.

The content of the main page really isn’t much different than the old version, but I think it is more appealing and gives me a little more leeway to add new features in the future.  Even this main page isn’t really “done” because I have a few ideas in mind.  In particular, I have more things to add to the “DTBL Chatter” section, like the ability to add a quick reply, or even a new topic, straight from the main page.  I may add some more news feeds or widgets to the right hand column as well.

The image you see on the home page (currently Buster Posey) is set to automatically pull the most recent image from the DTBL News feed.  So I will try to include photos in most of my posts to keep this fresh.  Soon you will all have the ability to create blog posts too, at which time I will encourage you to upload photos when you post a new story.

You should be able to get to all of the old pages via the new menu system.  I should point out that the all important link to log in to the site is now in the upper right hand corner, along with links to the league’s Facebook group page, Twitter feed and RSS feed (DTBL News).

So why am I calling this DTBL v3.0?  I’ve never really used a numbering system for the different versions of the league web site over the years.  But essentially, I consider this to be the third major iteration of the site.  It started as a very simple text based site back in the late 90s.  At that time, I used a desktop software program to update the stats and generate reports which were then uploaded to a web site.  Version 2 was the dynamic, database driven web site that we’ve been using since 2003.  This is the first major change since then, so I’m calling it 3.0.  Not many software developers get away with going 8 years between major releases, but my annual Commissioner’s salary of $0 isn’t quite high enough to justify much more work with that.  I’m enjoying this project though, so I hope you like the results.

I don’t want to write a lengthy blog post every time I update a new page, so I’ll probably start a thread on the DTBL Forum to keep you updated on my progress.  Now that I have a main page tie-in to the DTBL Forum again, you might actually see these posts!  As always, I welcome your comments.  Feel free to post a comment on this post, or on the DTBL Forum.

Only about 12 hours until first pitch.  Welcome to the 2011 season!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.