How to build website for article repository?

[superboyac]

I am interested in building another website.  This one will house a ton of articles.  Each one is a recap of a Laker game.  There has been an article written by a certain user on a forum for the past several years.  It represents a huge amount of work, and I'd like to showcase in a nice, polished website.

Ideally, the website would be super simple, yet elegant.  Maximum 2-columns.  One to show an article, and another column to navigate to a particular game.  I'm thinking the navigation can be by date (where you see a mini-calendar on the side), and/or you can pick a specific game based on season/game number/opponent/etc.  It would be nice to have a nice search feature also.  What is the best way to go about doing this?

Each of the articles has been made as a forum post, so there is bbcode involved.  So, I'm thinking I will have to use a lot of batch editing tools to format all the articles in a way where they can by systematically uploaded to the website without much fuss (once the system is in place).  In fact, it would be nice if I could use the bbcodes to do what they do on posts, and have it show up in the website the same way.  but if that is not possible, I would need to batch edit the articles to replace bbcode with their proper analogous code in php or html or whatever.

Now, i know the first option to consider is Wordpress.  Which is fine.  But I'm interested in other options or suggestions if anyone has any.  I'm not a fan of the blog format, but I have to admit in this case, it begs for a blog format because it's all organized my date anyway.

As usual, thanks!

[40hz]

Semi-OT (Feel free to ignore.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Each one is a recap of a Laker game.

Be interesting to see if the Lakers management decides to go after it for publishing their "copyrighted" content.

If they do, just let them know it's a "BS threat" - and furthermore you know that it is.


Interesting article over at TechDirt about this issue:

Link: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090904/0304256103.shtml

MLB Refuses To Give Permission To Guy To Describe Game To A Friend
from the expressed-written-permission dept

A couple years ago, law professor Wendy Seltzer used the NFL as an example of sports leagues performing copyfraud, by claiming copyright control beyond what is allowed by law. Specifically, she was talking about the warning mentioned at some point during every game. For the NFL it was: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." In Seltzer's case, amazingly, the NFL sent a DMCA takedown of her posting that clip to YouTube -- giving her another "teachable moment" on copyright abuse.

And yet, sports leagues still continue the copyfraud. One of the fine folks over at Consumerist, Phil Villarreal, found the wording of Major League Baseball's warning quite questionable:

   "Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,"

Unlike the NFL one, at least it didn't say "descriptions," but "account" is pretty close. So, Villarreal contacted MLB to request "express written consent" to provide an "account" of the game he had watched to a friend. To its credit, MLB responded and asked him to call someone in its business development department... who (perhaps reasonably) thought it was a joke and did not provide the written consent (and stopped responding to calls and emails).

Now, obviously, this is a bit of a joke (and a funny one), but it does highlight a rather serious problem. Copyright holders are pretty regularly claiming significantly more rights than they actually hold over content, and many people simply assume that they can do this. This leads to them to think that they don't have basic rights concerning not just "fair use" but stuff that is obviously not covered by copyright, such as an "account of this game." There really should be sanctions against such copyfraud.

Now the $100,000 question becomes whether or not the hosting ISP knows this should someone come knocking with a DMCA take-down notice.

Note: The only reason I mention this is because I know somebody whose website had this very problem with a certain sports association following a series of highly critical articles about some of the refereeing during games leading up to the finals. Because these articles coincided with the games during the actual finals, this sports association argued they constituted a form of "play-by-play" reporting which is specifically prohibited by their rules for internet blogging and news reporting.

She successfully called the association's bluff, - but - not before her ISP shut her down for a week because they received a bogus take-down notice from them.

[app103]

I would suggest something like Wordpress for this. Just get (or create) a nice template for it that you find agreeable to your tastes. No need to have all the bells & whistles and a million plugins that do all kinds of stuff you are not interested in. There are a lot of clean looking elegant templates available, and you can modify them to suit your needs.

You said you wanted search. Wordpress has that, built in.
You said you wanted a calendar. There is a widget for that, and it is included with the Wordpress installation. I would just suggest modifying the dates of the posts to match the dates of the games, when you post them to the blog, so they sync up correctly.

You can use tags and categories to classify season/opponent/etc and list them in groups on the sidebar. (or use a dropdown if you prefer).

Rather than copying and pasting the posts from the bbcode into the built in Wordpress post editor, I would use Windows Live Writer to make them, and copy & paste from the actual rendered forum pages. It would retain the formatting, links and all, but in HTML form, instead of bbcode.

[JavaJones]

Yeah, Wordpress was the first thing that came to my mind too. It sounds like exactly what you need, which is a rarity when considering systems for website building purposes.

- Oshyan