OBBLM (Online Blood Bowl League Manager)

howlinggriffon · Post by **howlinggriffon** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:34 am

I just wanted to say that my league has been running on this software for about two weeks now and he coaches taking part absolutely love it. So far there's seventeen of them taking part and the ability for them to enter all their results without needing me to manage everything is helping to make the league run far more smoothly than the last couple of years when I did it manually.

I just wanted to say thanks to the guys who wrote the software and who are working on updates. For people like me who aren't experts at writing code, it's allowed us to have a seriously cool tool that enhances the running of our leagues.

Angeblich · Post by **Angeblich** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 12:47 pm

i second that!

Lahatiel · Post by **Lahatiel** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:00 am

I'm planning on taking a shot at installing the OBBLM package on our league's site within the next week or two; I plan to test out the 0.3.7 version, as we'll be running LRB 5b this season. While my question might very well reveal that I don't have enough knowledge to be trying this, here it goes anyway: when the OBBLM site says that, ideally, you should have the PCRE, GDlib and PDFlib modules installed... how do you tell whether or not they're installed? Our site's hosting provider does list PHP5 on its Features page, but I haven't yet found any deeper description when it comes to itemizing the availability of particular modules.

Angeblich · Post by **Angeblich** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:04 am

i phoned my host, when installing obblm. they also had to tell me where to change a special setting. but i am no computer-internet-buff, so i don't remember.

but nicholas is available via email, so, if any problems occur, you could mail him about what you need or where to look for it.

CensorshipSux · Post by **CensorshipSux** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 5:19 pm

Are there any plans to allow custom rosters?

MrBister · Post by **MrBister** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:16 pm

Kind of. You can edit the lrb6 file and add custom teams/positions/stars there. PM me if you need help.

CensorshipSux · Post by **CensorshipSux** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:37 pm

I only have relatively limited experience designing webpages (nothing fancier than basic html). I don't have a host yet.

Is there any way I can test out the program locally on my machine? I'll probably have to re-install linux?

And as for hosting, I doubt there are any free places that I can host it? If the software does what I'd like it to, I'll get a good host much sooner than I was expecting.

howlinggriffon · Post by **howlinggriffon** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:27 pm

My website cost around £20 in total. I bought the domain with two years registration from www.123-reg.com and a year's Linux hosting from www.catalyst2.com. That's for a UK based site. All I did then was redirect the name servers from the domain to the webhosting site.

Still - pretty cheap...

nicholasmr · Post by **nicholasmr** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:02 pm

I have with the latest version (0.37) added a more or less detailed installation guide to the INSTALL file for the software needed to run obblm. Here is its contents:

-----------------------------------
MYSQL, PHP AND WEBSERVER SETUP HELP
-----------------------------------

Here is a small guide if you are not sure on how to actually use and "start" OBBLM:

OBBLM is a web application which means that it is run from a web browser.
The browser you open must load the OBBLM pages from a webserver, which can be ANY computer with webserver software installed on it.
The webserver software itself depends on another piece of software to interpret the OBBLM program files. This interpretation software is called PHP.
Now you are almost ready to go. OBBLM depends on yet another piece of software to store your league data (in a database) for later retrieval. This software is called MySQL.
By installing all three from above you are all set.

Installation guide for MySQL, PHP and Apache (webserver): http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-a ... ndows.html

Please note that by installing the above dependent software, you are able to use OBBLM without internet access!

Hope that helped.

Nicholas.

CensorshipSux · Post by **CensorshipSux** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 7:26 pm

Thanks a ton. I just downloaded a Dummies Guide to php and mysql. Now give me a couple of months and I might have something very interesting done...

Angeblich · Post by **Angeblich** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:53 am

i don't know anything about php or mysql. but i managed to install the obblm and we are using it.

it is really not that hard. once you have a bit of webspace capable of php, you can install it. you only have to learn the parts of mysql or php, which cause problems somehow.

i had 2 problems, that my webspace-company could solve via phone, and 1 or two issues i could solve with nicholas' help.

Lahatiel · Post by **Lahatiel** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 2:33 am

Same here, I installed it and am running it for our league with no prior PHP/SQL knowledge. I did run into two small issues, one just a adjustment we wanted to make for our league of our own preference, and one league scheduling problem that I'd caused in the first place. But with just a small bit of poking around and a Google search for how to do a SQL find/replace query, I was able to resolve both issues on my own with no real trouble whatsoever. Overall, the software has worked quite well and very simply for us -- I highly recommend it.

CensorshipSux · Post by **CensorshipSux** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 7:42 am

I got it up and running. Did some adjustments to create some custom rosters. I've got some help that's been looking at converting the pdf rosters into a format that is compatible with Skijunkie's client. Then it's time to move on to automate the match selections, match reports, skill selections and a bunch of custom rules. I'll definitely be learning php for all that...

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 8:17 am

howlinggriffon wrote:My website cost around £20 in total. I bought the domain with two years registration from www.123-reg.com and a year's Linux hosting from www.catalyst2.com. That's for a UK based site. All I did then was redirect the name servers from the domain to the webhosting site.

Still - pretty cheap...

my 2p on this

avoid 123 reg like the plague, for the uk vidahost are my recommendation (they are also cheaper) us wise i believe namecheap are good

for cheap hosting check out hostgator, based in the US but its the cheapest place to get hosting, load times will be slightly longer (like a split second) for UK users, but for a bb league site it's fine

nicholasmr · Post by **nicholasmr** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:01 pm

CensorshipSux wrote:I got it up and running. Did some adjustments to create some custom rosters. I've got some help that's been looking at converting the pdf rosters into a format that is compatible with Skijunkie's client. Then it's time to move on to automate the match selections, match reports, skill selections and a bunch of custom rules. I'll definitely be learning php for all that...

Sounds interesting. Please keep me/us updated.
If you write some working code which you would like a review of, then please post it at www.code.google.com/p/obblm (under the issues section).

The same actually goes for all of you. If you write something nice which other obblm users may benifit from or simply have ideas for improvements.

Nicholas.