Plan of Action

In order to make this a successful website, I think I need to map out what I want to do before I actually create it. While it is tempting to "dive in" and just start creating it, it will be much harder for me to connect the pages to each other and justify my structure if I do that. I found that when we were trying out Dreamweaver, I had "writer's block" just trying to write a small bit of text, most likely because I was preoccupied with making sure I was using the program directly. If I already have my content planned out on paper, I can focus on just the layout and making sure everything functions correctly. I guess the best analogy would be making an outline to a paper; it's never a good idea to just start writing a big paper without a general sense of where you're going with it. The reader will recognize your lack of preparation and will wonder to themselves, "where is this paper going?" I feel that the same thing would happen with a website that was created in similar fashion.

Logo Ideas

Again, I am looking for a football theme to integrate with the logo I choose. I'm thinking of some sort of stylized acronym as one element of the logo, (so, in this case, it would be "FFP"). The FFP would need to be augmented by some sort of football object, and I have several ideas for what that could be. It could have a rectangular-shaped field as a background to the letters, a ball, a goalpost could surround the letters, they could be inscribed on a helmet (although I am not sure if I can make a realistic-looking helmet with the graphics editor), or I could put the letters on top of a "playbook binder." I like all of these ideas, but what I choose will probably be a combination of what logo is the easiest to create and looks the most like what I intend it to be.

Color Scheme

Since the topic is football, specifically NFL football, I would like to find a way to incorporate the colors of both the game itself and the colors of the league. Regarding the game, the colors I could use would be green (for the field), brown (for the ball), and orange (for the first down markers and pylons). Since the NFL's logo is, red, white, and blue, I may try to fit that theme in as well. Obviously not all these colors can go together, so I will probably have to jettison some of them, or at least be very subtle with my usage of them. But I feel these colors are the most logical for me to use since they are related to the game in question. After all, there is no "fantasy" color.

Challenges

Aside from the fact that this will be my first website that has more than two pages, my biggest challenges will revolve around how to explain Fantasy Football in a way that is thorough and easy to understand, but not too long-winded or boring. One way to avoid this trap is to search for similar websites and observe what works and what doesn't on these pages. Another strategy would be for me to pretend that I've never played before and ask myself "would this make sense?" I think the key will be to avoid using technical jargon and Fantasy "slang" whenever possible (unless I adequately explain its meaning beforehand). To keep things from being too elementary, I'm going to make it clear that the audience must have at least a casual knowledge of how football works. Otherwise, I would waste possibly more time on my site just trying to explain the game of football instead of the game that relates to football.

Another challenge will be showing pages with appropriate content. Many of the teams in my leagues have vulgar names, and there are message boards and "trash talking" features in which the language is mostly not repeatable in public. Luckily, some of the teams in my leagues have rather tame names, so I will probably just use their pages for my screen shots. Since, as I mentioned before, the league is password protected, none of the links I provide will take the audience to the parts of these sites that contain all the unseemly language that I speak of.

Thank you for visiting this blog, and hopefully this will be an interesting and informative site!

Links

Here are some links I will most likely recommend to the audience of my final website:

ESPN.com's "Instant Replay" fantasy report

Sports Illustrated.com's fantasy page

Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football (the site where my Fantasy Leagues are in; it is password protected, but I will provide screen shots)

Topic Selection

As an avid sports fan (specifically Philadelphia sports), I first hoped to make a website about all the memorable games I have been to in the past. I thought about providing scans of the tickets I kept, using AP photos (if available) of the games, and links to press accounts and detailed statistical summaries of the games. I decided not to do this because the theme is just too broad. Also, it is quite subjective for me to say games were "memorable," especially if I had trouble tracking down evidence that these games were, in fact, special.

My next topic idea was going to be a profile of the cats at my parents' house. But I realized that this was not a topic of "special interest" to a specific audience, so while it might have been a fun sight to do for me and my parents, it would not be considered relevant to anyone else on the web.

Fantasy Football made the most sense because the rise of the internet has made it mainstream, and I could provide both explanations of how to play it, as well as tips on how to improve one's chances of winning.