Hello,

 

My name's Martin and I'm an Englishman currently living in North Carolina. I'm looking for some advice...

 

I'm in the process of designing my own website. It will be a sports info/news site focusing on soccer, perhaps with a little cricket thrown in to the mix eventually.

 

I have the content knowledge/skills, but no real web design/development background. I am, however, very keen to learn the ropes as I go and have read my way through a variety of "basic" guides to html, css, php, xml, mysql, etc. I've also researched the open source CMS options out there.

 

All of which has left me, still, a little confused about what structure/format I should use.

 

Here are the main features the site will (hopefully) have:

 

- News articles/features

- League tables

- Results/fixtures

- Club profiles

- Player profiles

- Blog

 

Obviously, there will be a lot of data and, ideally, I would be able to update things like team rosters and player info in one place, without having to change hundreds of pages every week. That's why I was thinking dynamic...database...php...etc...

 

I'm just not sure where to start and where a CMS fits in. The last thing I want is to find that, halfway through building this thing, I've chosen the wrong direction.

 

If anyone has any advice I would be eternally grateful!

 

Cheers.

Hello,

 

My name's Martin and I'm an Englishman currently living in North Carolina. I'm looking for some advice...

 

I'm in the process of designing my own website. It will be a sports info/news site focusing on soccer, perhaps with a little cricket thrown in to the mix eventually.

 

I have the content knowledge/skills, but no real web design/development background. I am, however, very keen to learn the ropes as I go and have read my way through a variety of "basic" guides to html, css, php, xml, mysql, etc. I've also researched the open source CMS options out there.

 

All of which has left me, still, a little confused about what structure/format I should use.

 

Here are the main features the site will (hopefully) have:

 

- News articles/features

- League tables

- Results/fixtures

- Club profiles

- Player profiles

- Blog

 

Obviously, there will be a lot of data and, ideally, I would be able to update things like team rosters and player info in one place, without having to change hundreds of pages every week. That's why I was thinking dynamic...database...php...etc...

 

I'm just not sure where to start and where a CMS fits in. The last thing I want is to find that, halfway through building this thing, I've chosen the wrong direction.

 

If anyone has any advice I would be eternally grateful!

 

Cheers.

 

Hi Martin,

 

I am currently working on a site for something very similar - my initial research led me to think about using Exp​ression Engine for it.

However, as brilliant as EE is, getting the League Tables and Fixtures generated dynamically looked to be quite complicated for me to do as I've not got any experience with PHP. In the end I decided to write my own CMS in C# (.NET), specifically for this new project.

 

However, any CMS worth it's salt will be able to let you construct pages for your blog, news, articles, profiles etc very easily. I'd take a look at EE for that - it's not free but it is very powerful and the cost is not prohibitive.

 

If you want dynamic league tables, then you're going to have to fit a DB and some sort of scripting into it (MYSQL/PHP or SQL Server/.NET).

 

I'm on quite a short deadline for my project and so have stuck to what I know and that's .NET.

 

Heres a link to Exp​ression Engine. Hope this helps.

Hi Martin,

 

Expression Engine seems a bit too much for a small site.

 

I presume it is a sports team?

 

If so, I'm currently developing a CMS specifically for clubs, which has some of the features you've asked for.

 

If you want, I can set you up on a beta trial, and add the features you required?

 

Let me know,

Peter

Expression Engine seems a bit too much for a small site.

That depends on the goals and long term future of the site, over time the amount of content will grow so having the flexibility of a good CMS is insurance for the future.