Now that the Astros are done for 2003, things have quieted down here at OWA. Of course, we haven?t quite approached The Void yet, so all the offseason banter has yet to get fired up. Hopefully, however, the post-choke whining is over with, and if it?s not, then we?ll try to make sure that you don?t have to read it. It?s been an interesting inaugural season, to say the least. The Astros made their first-ever trip to Yankee Stadium in June and no-hit them. They beat up o?n the Pirates and Reds, yet faltered against the Brewers, especially when it mattered most. Roy Oswalt couldn?t keep his groin healthy, Wade Miller couldn?t keep his game straight, and Tim Redding turned in what could be considered the best season by a regular starter o?n the team. Richard Hidalgo had a monster season at the plate and in the field. Adam Everett won the starting shortstop job after toiling in the Astros farm system for the better part of three seasons. The much-maligned Pirates? 2002 opening day starter, Ron Villone, was a valuable commodity in the second half.
Of course, none of this is news, and Andyzipp has already detailed most of it in his latest column. Overall, however, it made for a good season, and a better year for OWA than I had originally hoped. What I?d like to do with this article is provide a sort of behind-the-scenes look at what it took to get this thing off the ground, as well as talk about where it?s headed. If you like nerdy stuff, read o?n. Otherwise, read o?n and make fun of me.
Fellowship Of The Whoopass
For those that aren?t in the know, this community was borne from the original TalkZone at Kev and Scott?s AstrosConnection. In the final days of AC.com, a group of TZers quickly banded together to discuss the possibilities of developing a spinoff of AC.com. This group consisted of myself, Andy, HudsonHawk, Noe In Austin, Arky Vaughan, and Michael N. Since doubts arose regarding the ability of TZers to fit in with other established Astros forums, getting a forum up and running was our first priority.
By this point, I thought I was already in over my head. I was dealing with a server configuration I wasn?t familiar with, and our forum software was programmed in a language I wasn?t familiar with by someone whose first language was French. Therefore, obviously, all of the documentation was in French. Plus, it was just downright ugly (go here for an example of the default forum look; what you see in the TZ is heavily modified). After a while, however, I started getting the hang of it, and after establishing the familiar look of the forum, the TalkZone launched o?n October 23, 2002 to lots and lots of server crashes.
The next step was to get our whole site in order. Noe (who does all of OWA?s graphics) had a general design of the site ready to go very early in the process, but I didn?t have the time to get everything set up. The erstwhile ColumnZone was started as a forum for our columnists to get their stuff written without the rest of the site being operational. The New Year came and went, and a plan to have the full site in place by the start of spring training was put into motion. It didn?t get very far, but we did produce a stripped-down version of the design for our front news page (which can still be seen here). The new plan was to have everything ready for Opening Day. That didn?t quite pan out either. A new deadline of the All-Star Break was set.
Nuke Thy Enemies
It became clear that, with everybody?s restricted free time, a semi-automatic weapon—err, website would be necessary to preserve everyone?s sanity. Before, when a recap had to be written, it was e-mailed to either myself or Noe, and then we would post it. Sometimes e-mail problems prevented recaps from being posted at all. Updating the standings o?n the scoreboard page was a 20-minute chore. And future changes to the appearance of the site would be hampered by so much static content.
Enter the Postnuke Content Management System. Noe first conceived the idea to use a CMS, so I took the idea and ran with it. Sometime in early April, behind the scenes, was the first time that this system was installed o?n the site. Eventually we were able to adapt Noe?s graphical design to it so that the new site looked like our own, and not some cookie-cutter web site. With the databases working properly and the site?s appearance set, all of the hard work was finished.
Then came the grunt work.
“Who Needs Rest? I’ll Rest When I Die”
Kev and Scott had given us permission to reproduce all of their old articles o?n OWA. The number of editorials to post was greater than 300, and all of those needed to be entered into the Postnuke database. Since there was no option to ?import? data from a text file, each and every article had to be entered manually. All I have to say is, thank God for cut and paste.
There was a period of uncertainty over the weekend before the All-Star Game, because our server was crashing more than normal. Without the server working correctly, there?s no way to enter the articles. Plus, no o?ne would see the new site if it kept crashing. Thankfully, our hosting provider responded in spades and solved the problem in time. In typical OWA fashion, we didn?t make the Tuesday deadline we had set for ourselves (even after a hellish load of work to get it ready – o?ne night I stayed up until about 5:30am), but by Thursday our whole site was up and running. I did a lot of sleeping Thursday afternoon.
Being o?n the other side of this site and community has certainly been an intriguing experience for me. If anything, I?ve gained more respect for the hard work the former webmasters of AC.com put into that site. And they programmed the whole thing themselves!
It?s been a fun ride so far. Here?s to a non-productive offseason in the TZ. Also (probably speaking to the younger crowd here), if any of you use AOL Instant Messenger, feel free to talk to me. My username is Paradox183, and I?m o?nline more than is good for me.
Horns of the Righteous
ESPN?s College Gameday will be at the LBJ fountain o?n the University of Texas campus this weekend, detailing the UT-Kansas State game at 2:30pm o?n Saturday. Your humble webmaster will be somewhere behind Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstriet, wearing a burnt orange Hawaiian shirt and hoping like hell that Corso doesn?t pick Texas to win. If you happen to go to the game, come see me and my girlfriend ? section 24, row 5, also known as the worst seats in DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium. Sitting 5 feet from the Hellraisers doesn?t help either.
Waldo is a junior math major and student employee of the University of Texas at Austin. He is also o?ne of the newest contributors for TopFive.com?s College Life humor list, something he?s not sure he?s proud of yet. E-mail him at [email protected].