Home British baseball Project COBB website under the knife

Project COBB website under the knife

by Joe Gray

Project COBB has always delivered its online information through a mixture of static HTML objects (most often tables) and links to Excel files and PDFs. As a way of making data available this has been functional but, for several reasons, limited. First, it has relied on users being prepared to download and navigate files. Secondly, it has not been possible to link from other websites to specific pieces of information contained in those files. Thirdly, it has taken much sweat and labour on my part, diverting time away from other activities that might have been useful.

Until now that is. Today sees the launch of the fourth iteration of the web-driven initiative to promote and preserve the present and past of British baseball. A screenshot of the new-look homepage can be seen below.

Cosmetic tweaks have been smaller in creating this latest iteration than in previous version jumps, but for the first time I have incorporated PHP coding and underpinned the website with a MySQL database. In enabling the user to dynamically drive the content via the window of a browser it has revolutionized the way in which the archives of information are now presented. It also future-proofs the work to a certain extent as the graft that has gone into the upgrade will mean a less time-consuming job of adding periodic updates in years to come.

Line-up of new features

  1. Single-season and career modern top-tier stats can now be sorted and filtered within the website.
  2. Statistical findings can now be linked to directly (e.g. Luke Foley set a modern record for times hit by pitch last season). 
  3. Event-by-event and career stats are now available for the Great Britain national team’s major tournaments.
  4. The illustrated, year-by-year Great Britain national team history can now be browsed within the website.
  5. An archive of domestic club and national team British baseball photos has been launched.
  6. Great Britain national team player biographies have been presented more attractively.
  7. Championship rosters can now be browsed easily.
  8. Project COBB Photography galleries can now be changed between and viewed more simply.
  9. Visual quick links have been added to the homepage.

Bug fixing

As with any web upgrade project, there will inevitably be some bugs. If you spot any, I’d be very grateful if you could report them via this form (or by email to me if you have my address).

Previous iterations

For anyone feeling nostalgic, screenshots of previous iterations are presented below in reverse chronological order.

 

 

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1 comment

Matt Smith February 3, 2013 - 8:34 pm

Great work Joe, it makes it much easier to search through the info.

This may well prove to be a great starting point for writers looking for inspiration as part of the British Baseball Writing Awards. There are so many great little nuggets of info here.

Matt

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