What Teams/schools have the best Website

[DonCChatt]

In this era of electronic media, what schools have really good websites for their soccer programs? What information sets it apart? What should a really good website for girl's soccer contain?

 

If you have one/know one, please include a link to the actual website in your post. For purposes of comparison, any high school website, part of the school, or independent, could be included. For that matter, if somebody knows of a really geat website for a school outside of Tennessee, include that also.

[BigG]

CAK soccer website

Ours is still in the infant stage. We used Alcoa's site as an example. I thought they had a really good one. Sorry, don't rememeber the URL. Akula can get it for you.

[Canesoverhere]

CAK soccer website

Ours is still in the infant stage. We used Alcoa's site as an example. I thought they had a really good one. Sorry, don't rememeber the URL. Akula can get it for you.

 

 

This is a cover page for all of Strongsville (OH) soccer. Go into the girls High School page. If you are seeking something like this, it may be easier to contact the folks at the bottom to use this resuorce for less than $100 a year.

 

http://www.strongsvillesoccer.com/

[gridironguy]

As a computer science professional, the CAK website is decently impressive. Having a flash video in a website is a poor choice, as flash is bandwidth heavy, which can cause problems for viewers on slow internet connections. However, the entire site is not in flash, like so many are these days, so it's not a huge deal. The site looks very good. However, it's worth noting that it is not standards compliant (see here) which means that it is not guaranteed to be displayed properly.While the major browsers (Internet Explorer, firefox, and Opera) have enough room to display the pages the way the were meant, on platforms where memory is not as freely available and browser code has to be minimized, this is not the case. Having a standards-compliant website is a sign of dedication, and will ensure that any person on any platform (even on a palm-pilot, PSP, iPhone, Nintendo wii, etc.) will see the website in the way it was intended.

I'm interested into why the site is (apparently) written in ASP, which is pretty widely regarded as a botched attempt by Microsoft to replace PHP.

 

The above comments apply to Alcoa's website as well, although Alcoa's website unfortunately contains extra Flash. Also, all the links at the bottom of the pages look tacky, as does the good search. Additionally, a poor attempt at disabling right click with Javascript makes the site look amateur. It's trivial to disable Javascript completely bypassing this "protection" and is somethin gthat was commonly seen in Geocities websites 5 years ago; it is NEVER seen in professional websites.

 

All in all, both pages are fairly good, but with a little extra work could be great.

 

CAK just needs to add the content, which I'm sure they're working on, and get the code to meet with the W3C's XHTML standard (it's far closer to standards than most websites; shouldn't take much work)

 

Alcoa needs to remove the clutter at the bottom of the page, and remove that ridiculous Javascript code that apparently intends to prevent the downloading of its source code and/or photos (in neither case it will be very successful) and well as getting the page up to standards (it's quite a bit away: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ne&group=0)

 

Oak Ridge's website is about average I'd say. It's home page is horrendous. Terrible. Words cannot express how awful it is, with all that clutter. However, the rest of the pages look decent (not great) and have some good information. However, I'd like to see them provide some past scores and results. Past rosters. And to do that, they'll need to stop making pages in Microsoft Office.

 

Oak ridge's girls website is fairly good. It looks simple, but that's what you want. It's better to be simple and fast than to be a fancy-looking bandwidth-hog. Again, I'd like to see some information about past teams, but if you are only looking for information about 2007's team, it does the job quite impressively. This is probably the most impressive soccer website I've seen thus far, although again it is not up to standards; 83 errors on the home page is not a good sign. Also, the hit counter is something you see on a tripod website; that needs to go.

 

I have not been able to find websites for Bearden, Farragut, or Catholic, but if anyone has links to them or any other team's, I'd be happy to look at them.

[hamlet7478]

Oak Ridge High School has the best site I've seen. Here's the web address:

 

http://www.ladywildcatsoccer.org/

 

Up to date game reports including good photos, player profiles, plus a secure area for coach's notes plus game stats.

[ThomasJ]

The best name:

 

www.hogeyesoccer.com

[Welshdragon]

www.dbsoccer.org

[gridironguy]

www.dbsoccer.org

 

 

That's a very impressive looking website. Lots of information, nice use of javascript. It's simple, but effective. Again, I'd encourage your site administrator(s) to have a look at this. Additionally, all the tables are given fixed locations, which means that some users (such as me) have to scroll over left and right to see all the content. Having to scroll down is perfectly normal, but having to scroll left and right is not a good thing. Using relative locations, rather than absolute, should fix this. Besides those two things, however, it is wonder. It's as good as, and probably better than, the Oak Ridge girls' website.

[BigG]

As a computer science professional, the CAK website is decently impressive. Having a flash video in a website is a poor choice, as flash is bandwidth heavy, which can cause problems for viewers on slow internet connections. However, the entire site is not in flash, like so many are these days, so it's not a huge deal. The site looks very good. However, it's worth noting that it is not standards compliant (see here) which means that it is not guaranteed to be displayed properly.While the major browsers (Internet Explorer, firefox, and Opera) have enough room to display the pages the way the were meant, on platforms where memory is not as freely available and browser code has to be minimized, this is not the case. Having a standards-compliant website is a sign of dedication, and will ensure that any person on any platform (even on a palm-pilot, PSP, iPhone, Nintendo wii, etc.) will see the website in the way it was intended.

I'm interested into why the site is (apparently) written in ASP, which is pretty widely regarded as a botched attempt by Microsoft to replace PHP.

 

I appreciate your points! We tried to put something simple together, and some parents volunteered their time, server, and effort to put up the site (which I GREATLY appreciate!). I thought it turned out fantastic for what we wanted (a place to post schedules, announcements, and contact info) as well as some pics from the season. I wish I had more time to do more with it, but I am swamped already, and season (for me) hasn't even started! I'll run this computer lingo by my computer guy and see if it makes more sense to him (sorry, it is like reading Latin to me!)

 

Would you add anything different besides how is was "written" (sorry if that is the wrong term)? I would appreciate your comments Grid.

[gridironguy]

I'm sure your computer guy will know what I'm about to post, but here are my thoughts regarding content.

 

How interactive do you want the content to be? If you are going to want a massively interactive website, that will take lots of work, and will require some sort of database. The fact that CoachT still does not have scores from previous seasons up is a testament to how much work is required. However, in the long run, it will save time. I'll give you an example. Take the Catholic-CAK series, and let's pretend that they will be in District 4 Class A/AA for the next several years (which, I've read, you do not think is likely). Boys' or Girls' soccer, it doesn't matter. As you know, they're guaranteed to play each other at least once, as many as four times, and likely three times (at least in Boys') for the foreseeable future. Let's say that you wanted to keep statistics on the series: The overall record, record at Catholic, record at CAK, record at a neutral site, record in the overall playoffs, record in district playoffs, record in regional playoffs, record at state, as well as goals for, against, and goal difference in each of those situations. You could very well just research those statistics, post them up on the website, and manually change them each time. And looking in the short run that's not a big deal. But what happens if you forget to update one of the statistics? Then they're wrong, and you very well may not notice. Or what if you wanted to add the same information for another series (CAK-Webb, for instance). A database would allow this to be automated. You'd put in the scores and locations of each of the previous matches, and then code could be written to automate all of this information. And after each new match only the new score and location would have to be added. What's more is that you could do that for every CAK game, allowing statistics for every series, as well as allowing statistics to be generated for all sorts of situations: statistics against opponents in a given district, region, classification; statistics at home and on the road; statistics in the district/regional/state tournament.

Again, this is a massive amount of work; however, it would certainly make your website stand out, provided the will is there.

 

If you are not willing to go through all that work, here is what I would do:

Have a link to information on the current team, which has links to a photo gallery, statistics page, roster, schedule, and news. When that season ends, add a link to that page under a different page (Previous Seasons, or something) and create new pages for the new season.

[photomom]

I loved everyone's comments. Girl's high school soccer has come a long way in the past 20 years. It's about to get those websites up and working. Thanks for the info. /rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":rolleyes:" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />

[soccerCoach]

Having a flash video in a website is a poor choice, as flash is bandwidth heavy, which can cause problems for viewers on slow internet connections.

 

I differ, if the video is encoded at the right bitrate that won't cause any problem. You just have to serve the according bit rate for example, the flv have to be encoded at a lower bit rate for people who are using 56k modems, you will compromise the quality however. If it is being served from a flash streaming server you won't have to encode at different bit rates, just one and let it stream. To say flash video is a poor choice is not a correct statement, check some of the more visit websites such as espn, abc, cbs, they all serve videos..