Several members have suggested the idea of doing a kind of frontpage website for this site and I've decided that it would be a good idea to set one up.
Here are my plans:
The site will be totally interactive with this message board so that the two are one. We can have a page for Rob's ranking calculations threads, the tennis predictions game on here etc. Links to here with every article and also a big message board link.
Profile pages for as many of the Brits as possible, we can start off with a few and add to these over time. Links to special player sites aswell.
The front page will feature mini-articles on results for that particular day....eg last week for the results in Shrewsbury each day, results from Australia, Spain, Drew's plans for the Aberdeen Cup ..etc. The articles will just be short - result, next opponent, how this will affect rankings + any match info we had have etc along with a pic of the player and a link to the relevant thread on here.
This will help with search engine links to this message board and get more visitors and make it even more popular.
The big bonus aswell is concerning the lack of coverage for British tournaments and in particular live scoring. This website will really feature them and so I've mentioned to the LTA the possibility of having a similar system to that in Belgium and in Italy where tournament offices email scores every 20-30 min and we post them on a specially generated live scoreboard on the site. I mentioned how this would be extremely popular and the number of British tennis fans we have on this site and the LTA guys I spoke to seemed quite pro this idea.
Once the site is set up and looking good I will mention this to Roger Draper and see what he says.
The only problem is with finding people to help run and update the website....I will help but with running 4 player sites I have limited time. The website will be set up in freewebs basic to enable anyone with the password to be able to update it - it'll be as easy as email. If people would be willing to help out with posting news items that'd be fantastic - you can copy and paste your posts from here giving the results onto the site and just add a pic. If a good number of people are willing to help - 15-20 would be fab, then we will hopefully be able to solve the problem of the lack of scores from GB tournaments
Once the site is set up, I'll buy a domain name; eg: www.britishtennis.net or www.britishtennisonline.com, please let me know what you think would be best.
If you have any ideas please post them on here. I'm in the process of thinking what exactly to put on and where and how to lay it out so ideas are welcome.
Good idea. All I'll say, though is: keep it simple - that way it's easy to update and we keep the sense of community. Something that's Blog- like in structure may well work best???
- and I'm happy (Very) to post rankings posts to a page where I can sort the formatting out better - using html tables etc..
- Let's hope we all don't get horribly busy/interested in something else after a month without tennis.....
I don't have as much spare time as I used to but I am hoping to get back to that blessed state! I would be happy to help when I can.
Domain name - I too would be happy to make a contribution - PM me. I do like the sound of Britishtennis.net. As soon as the .net type were introduced I thought how they were tailor-made for tennis!
Many thanks for the enthusiastic posts posted so far in this thread
Good to hear that the idea is popular, I'll set up a freewebs account this evening.
Any ideas for the homepage ? Should we have the latest news items for that day on there or on another page.....what else do you think we should have on there....should it go straight into the latest news items or have some kind of welcome to the site info first ?
Any ideas for a site banner ?
I have a problem with the player profiles....there's going to be far too many for a 1 or two player profile pages and there's far too many players to create individual pages for each...any suggestions on how to get round this ?
I had the idea of setting up links entitled "male player profiles" and "female player profiles" and then those links directing to pages on blogspot.com on which I'd set up the profiles....that could get around that problem, what do you think ?
Any ideas for the homepage ? Should we have the latest news items for that day on there or on another page.....what else do you think we should have on there....should it go straight into the latest news items or have some kind of welcome to the site info first ?
I think there should definitely be a welcome to the site bit first, not sure exactly what though, so nice and helpful there!
Any ideas for a site banner ?
Not off the top of my head but I'll have a think about that.
I have a problem with the player profiles....there's going to be far too many for a 1 or two player profile pages and there's far too many players to create individual pages for each...any suggestions on how to get round this ?
I had the idea of setting up links entitled "male player profiles" and "female player profiles" and then those links directing to pages on blogspot.com on which I'd set up the profiles....that could get around that problem, what do you think ?
How about a small photo and very short line or so about the player saying age, town of origin, ranking/career best and maybe current/next tournament (I have no idea about websites so that may be too much work to keep up) oh and name of course! I'm thinking like the 'top players' pages on the lta site, but instead of a link to a profile page a link to their thread on here, most players have one I think and if not we can create them. Is that a feasible/good idea? Like I said I know nothing about building websites!
-- Edited by imoen at 17:58, 2006-11-27
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