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Inside the Website - The Pick'em Breakdown
By Adam Knoll | December 15, 2010 at 07:54 PM EST | No Comments
I have thought about how we are going to give out awards for the weekly pick’em. It’s incredible how fast the season has gone, and I am very grateful for the weekly attention people give it. In the end, just like the Fantasy league which will be wrapping up soon, it gets guys talking and people are happy to have a place to go and waste 5 minutes. Is it much? No, but it works, and I have fun putting it up (truth be known, I LOVE setting up ‘bad’ games between two horrible clubs…it’s not always about the good teams).
Everyone who has participated every single week (85 picks) will get the 100% award on our Tournament Champions page. Week in, week out, it’s important to point out who has been there through thick and thin. After that, the awards become a little harder. I’m thinking of doing it in tiers, as it’s not quite fair to use the percentages of those who have picked 85 games to those who have picked 20, more room for error, so I think tiers works well.
The first tier will be our ‘Teal’ award, which is always the highest we give out. The teal award will be between those who picked no less than 70 games. Some weeks you miss, but these are the heavy hitters, guys who were here almost every week, at least. The second tier, our ‘white’, will be those with over 45 games picked. These are the guys who definitely kept coming back, and hopefully by doing tiers, they will do it every single week next year. The third tier will be our ‘black’, which you will have had to have picked 20 or more games (basically 4 out of 17 weeks). Under that, I can’t really see handing out an award, yet that isn’t to say I don’t appreciate even the guys who chose to pick with us even once. Hopefully next year, we can double our amount.
After the regular season starts, it will be time to move on to the Playoff pick’em, where everybody starts fresh, and I would like to have a prize to give out to our ‘teal’ winner. Perhaps a shirt, or something like that. It’s always nice when people compete for an actual prize.
So there you go, for the easy breakdown:
All 85 games picked = 100% award
Highest percentage 70-85 games picked = Teal Award
Highest percentage 45-69 games picked = White Award
Highest percentage 20-44 games picked = Black Award
Thank you to all who participated.
Inside the Website - Blog Archive
By Adam Knoll | December 06, 2010 at 08:22 PM EST | No Comments
He he he…I’m happy. The Blog archive, only my nemesis since Oct 2009 has finally been vanquished, or at least controlled. See, I normally do major projects on the site in one of two ways, either I work on it in an agonizingly slow process (see: Player Pages), or I wait for a day when I have nothing going on (difficult with college and work, and family), the kids are gone, and I find something to be immensely interesting, and it will drive me to work on it until it’s done. The downside to option two is…well, if I am waiting for a muse to come around, sometimes the hussy doesn’t show. In this case, it didn’t show for 10 months.
The Blog archive took about 5 hours to finish and to be honest I was a little embarrassed about the state it was in. By clicking the archive button (good idea!), it took you to a page where the pages were broken down by type (category), and then after that by month. The latest month I had up there was January…so not so good. I had other pages ready to go, all the way up to May, but the effort of doing all the links was, well, forgotten and unwanted. I needed a better idea, yet with the season hitting full steam…there were better things to do.
So, come down to a cold day in November, and guess what, it’s done, finally. Oh, it’ll still be a pain to do (Every month I’ll need to create at least 5 pages…), yet it won’t as much of one. So that’s a win, I guess. If there is one thing I’m truly stunned by, it’s the amount of topics I have created. Instead of boring you with the details, I’ll just do a quick list of them all and their uses:
Observations: The flagship, and the easiest way to get out what I see.
Rookies: Every new player wants to know the team they are trying to join cares, we do.
GFL: Basically observations that have to do with our league
Little Things: Fundamentals about our team that are small, but important.
Inside the Website: Small windows into what we are doing and why with the site.
Expectations: When envisioned, it played a much bigger role. Hasn’t really worked out.
Panthers: Musings on the Wilmot High School teams, glaringly absent from 2010 writings
Final Tally: Postgame writings and ramblings, mostly awards
Press Release: Another GFL themed category, mostly had to do with the playoffs and getting scores out
Quickies: I liked starting this one, for small, quick topics that don’t need a full post
Any Given: More in depth, personal posts
Looking Glass: Kyle Ritter’s Category
Firing Away: Frank Kiczula’s Category
That’s 13 separate ways to go anytime something need to get written…and I think it’s a great fit. Maybe a little over the wall? Sure…but what do I care, I’m nuts anyway.
And just because I like this sort of thing: Number of posts per category
Observations: 36
GFL: 11
Rookies: 10
Final Tally: 9
Little Things: 6
Inside the Website: 6
Press Release: 6
Expectations: 2
Panthers: 2
Quickie: 2
Looking Glass: 2
Firing Away: 1
Any Given: 1
Total: 95
Per Month (14 months): 6.8
Per Week: 1.6
Inside the Website - The Monthly Hit Check
By Adam Knoll | December 01, 2010 at 04:30 AM EST | No Comments
I don’t know why numbers interest me so much, they just do. To me, trends are interesting, and, as always, numbers don’t lie. It goes without saying that this website is truly a hook to hang my hat on. I live this team, the way any psychotic person should; so for me, the numbers mean more than trends and comparisons, it’s an indictment to how I have been doing, and where I need to put my efforts.
Last month, our 2010 October beat out our 2009 October by about 50 or so ‘hits’. That’s basically negligible…a few taps here or there, no big deal. The case is more clear cut this month as even though Nov 2010 is up 130 over Oct 2010, it comes in a fairly astonishingly -1,100 from Nov 2009. So then, the wonderer in me asks…why? Well, last year, we had a few rooks that checked constantly as our Final Tryout occurred closer to November 17th than Nov 6th. Add in the Nov Board meeting and rookie report, it makes a big difference. However, I think it’s simpler than that. Most of our pages I would call ‘stagnant’; or the information is up and has been up and there is no need or call to change them. Why check those more than once or twice a month? So, obviously, we must grade ourselves based on our ‘static’ pages then, and we must be careful as the only way we can do that is from pages that were here both this year and last (a more challenging feat than expected).
The ‘static’ pages from both years are the Home page (the Phoenix page didn’t go up till spring), the Roster page, the Blog page, the Depth Chart, GFL Standings (for giggles), the Videos, and that’s pretty much it. However, I think I’m going to cut the Videos page out of it, because Videos are few are far between right now (and then), so, we are down to five.
Nov 10 Nov 09 Oct10
Home 961 1,058 911
Blog 460 466 356
Roster 88 169 107
Depth 122 158 97
Standings 33 33 5
What this tells me is that holding the final tryouts in early November cost us some traffic, no more, no less. If you were on a team, and you wanted to see the depth chart, you’d come by every few days just to check. It only makes sense that holding the tryouts later in the month last year drove up interest as views to the roster and the depth chart are vastly down this year. Staying with that theme, it makes sense that the home hits are down too. However, the Blog page is identical, and so is the standings page, so the only cause for alarm here is that there isn’t one. If I want more traffic next year, I’ll postpone final cuts till the third week of November again.
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