Site Information - Nighthawks Hockey Online
April 2002
Technologies
PHP pages with some content and all site, forum and stats data stored in a MySQL database.
Pages are customized using a modified template-driven system utilizing PHP and MySQL, which was inspired by an older message board system.
AJAX is used in parts for pulling in news feeds and other dynamic data.
RSS feeds available on the site are generated with homemade PHP scripts and not using any tools at the moment.
About Nighthawks Hockey Online
I started ice skating shortly after I learned how to walk. Nighthawks Hockey Online is the official website of the Niles Township Nighthawks Hockey Organization. The Nighthawks was the team I played with for all four of my high school years, and as of 2001, I have been their assistant coach. It has been the website that I have spent the most time developing and enhancing, more than all of these others combined.
How It Started
It was early in my web development days and I was just out of school. In addition to what I learned in college, I was spending a lot of time doing independent study, and I was itching to put it to use. Nighthawks Hockey Online started as a proof-of-concept that came across at the right place and the right time.
After graduating high school, I chose to hang up the skates and focus on my education and starting a career. I didn't venture too far from the ice, though. My younger brother was still playing for the same high school, and I hung around along to pick up the task of doing stats for the team. I had a Microsoft Access database full of hockey stats and was looking was looking for something to use for dynamic content on a website. Hmm...
And that's how it started. I threw together what I had that summer, August 2001, and put it up at my only site at the time. As tryouts started that for the season, I unveiled what I had put together so far. Over that winter, I started posting the latest scores and stats to the site and it took off from there.
By the end of that season, I was ready for my next summer project. In April 2002, Nighthawks Hockey Online moved to it's permanent home at nighthawkshockey.com
History
The original version of this site started as part of webnelly.com and was done on my own initiative as mentioned above. I was just done with college and looking for a job and looking for a way to put some of my new knowledge to work. It was the classic chicken-and-egg scenario; you can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience without a job.
So I started the site with the technology I was using at the time, which was Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Servlets. I wasn't up to speed on MySQL yet, so I opted for using XML documents to store rosters, game results, stats, and other info. Just starting out with XML as well, I wrote my own Simple API for XML (SAX) parser to use with the Java Servlets portion of the site, which was a good experience.
It wasn't until I wanted to some interactivity and community to the site that I started expanding into PHP and MySQL. I started with a free message board package that was available from my web host (I believe it was XMB). As I got more into PHP and using a database for storing data vs. XML, I picked up fast and started to convert my JSP and XML pages over to PHP and a MySQL database. It was a slow road at first, but a after a few weeks of late nights, I had my first, fully PHP site.
It's pretty much been a PHP site ever since, with only one minor site redesign over the last few years. There was a lot of customization of the message board templates and applying a hockey theme to many pieces, as well as incorporating more personalization features for members of the forum. The main change was adding a portal-type layout on the site's homepage, pulling data both from inside the site and from new sources giving our visitors quite a bit of info to start with.
Features
With the most visitor activity of any of my sites, and the seemingly long, winter hockey season, I was motivated to spend much of my free time working on adding new features to this site. Here's a brief list because, honestly, there are way too many to mention right now.
News Section - A mashup of about 10 different news sources, mostly from the site itself. Kind of like the Sports Page in your paper, with recent game results and summaries, weekly photos and video clips, and game previews for upcoming foes.
Schedules - A full month calendar view of all team events, practices, and games. Also incorporates games from all teams in the league, so keep track of who our competition is playing. The calendar included a web admin interface to manage data.
Stats Section - The original intent of this site, documenting season, individual, and all-time stats from over 10 seasons of Nighthawks Hockey.
League Section - Full coverage from our high school league, including head-to-head game results and previews, up-to-date standings and more.
Videos - This was all done pre-YouTube, and we had over 100 video clips from our games, mostly game highlights. In the last season, there was a separate section for players on the team to watch entire games online to study their mistakes and scout other teams. There was even viewership logging to track which players were watching the games and which one's weren't. Game Footage also include a place for coaches to add notes and comments for players to review.
Forum - As mentioned above, this started as an off the shelf message board package that I soon adapted to be my own. A good part of the community and user functions are centered around here, as well as much of the template customization.
Fun and Games - What's a website for high school kids without games, right? There was a few fun little diversions I created, as well as a way for forum members to recommend their favorite online games and share them with others. One of my favorite creations was a Blackhawks Pool, where I posted the entire season schedule and participants would pick Win/Lose/Tie for each game. There were standings of who was right the most often and who was just guessing.
RSS Feeds - This was my first attempt as RSS feeds before blogs made them so popular, and they were pretty neat. There was everything from latest scores, forum posts, league standings and more. Unfortuantely, analytics revealed that they weren't being used too much, probably because the concept of RSS feeds was still new to most web users.
One of my more ambitious attempts with this site was the concept of a simulated hockey league, named Fantasy Hockey League. Now disabled (I still have the code somewhere), it was an online game where players were able to create a team of players that would compete in simulated games with a random game engine that factor in rink conditions, referees, player stats and attributes, and a little bit of luck. It was a blast to put together and for the short, inagural season. It's something I'll probably go back to some day.
What's Next
Well, not much. The team itself was made up of three high schools because the participation among students wasn't that high. In the fall of 2007, there just wasn't enough players to field a team for the season. As the 2008 season approaches, it doesn't look like there's going to be a team this year either, and after missing two seasons, it becomes near impossible to rebuild a team.
At some point, the site might go into an Alumni Mode where it is just preserved for nostalga sake and probably for old players and friends to keep tabs on each other. These days, though, sites like Facebook and MySpace pretty much do that, so who knows.