So, I decided to put together this women’s hockey portal thing. Why? Well, honestly, I got tired of hunting all over the web for basic stuff. Scores here, news there, maybe some player info somewhere else entirely. It felt messy, and finding consistent updates was a real chore.
Getting Started
First off, I just kinda brainstormed what I’d even want on such a site. Nothing too crazy, you know? The basics:
- Scores and standings, obviously.
- Some news updates.
- Maybe basic info on leagues or major teams.
- Player profiles felt like a maybe, seemed like a lot of work to maintain.
I wasn’t trying to build the next big sports network or anything. Just a simple place to check what’s going on. I actually scribbled some ideas down on a notepad, how the pages might link together. Very low-tech planning phase, really.
The Build Process
Then came the actual making of it. I looked at a few options. Could I code it from scratch? Yeah, probably, but did I want to? Not really. My coding skills are okay, but I wanted this done sometime this year. So, I looked into those website builder platforms. Picked one that seemed straightforward enough, didn’t want to spend weeks learning some complex system.
Getting the structure up was the easy part. Making pages for ‘News’, ‘Scores’, ‘Teams’. Simple stuff. The real grind was pulling in the information. Man, that took time. Finding reliable sources for scores, especially for different leagues, wasn’t always easy. Some sites update fast, others… not so much. I spent a lot of evenings just copy-pasting results and trying to format them so they didn’t look like a complete mess.
Adding news involved keeping an eye on different sources and summarizing bits here and there. I tried to make sure it was just focused on the women’s game, which was the whole point.
Making it look decent was another headache. These builder tools give you templates, but getting things lined up just right, making sure it worked okay on a phone screen… that involved a fair bit of fiddling and previewing. It’s never quite as drag-and-drop as they advertise, is it?
Where It’s At Now
So, the portal is up. It exists. It’s pretty basic, not gonna lie. It has scores for some of the main leagues, a section with news bites I update when I can. I skipped the complex player database idea for now, maybe later if I feel particularly ambitious or find a really easy way to manage it.
I showed it to a couple of friends who follow the sport. They thought it was neat, pointed out a typo or two. Classic. It needs constant feeding, though. Updating scores, finding news – it doesn’t run itself. It’s a bit of a commitment, more than I initially thought, just keeping it current.
Honestly, it’s a start. Better than digging through ten different bookmarks, I guess. We’ll see how long I can keep up with the updates. For now, it’s a practical little project that scratches an itch I had. Nothing fancy, just a place for women’s hockey info. That was the goal, and well, it’s sort of there. Needs work, always needs work.
