Website help

[Bloody Sox]

The league I run is one with two conferences (20 teams) with separate player pools and doubleheaders for interleague games during 4 weeks during the regular season. Love the format, but have had trouble trying to please everyone in terms of website.

- We started at CBS, but I needed to set up two leagues and manage a lot of stuff myself, plus we had to pay twice for having two separate leagues set up. But the benefits were at least that I could set up fake teams and schedule doubleheaders so that the standings were at least accurate on the site.

- So then we switched to ESPN, which was at least free, but really didn't offer any benefits in terms of running the league (and was less configurable than CBS for some of the other stuff). The most annoying thing was that the standings were always wrong because I couldn't set up "fake" games to reflect the non-conference games.

- So last year I basically forced everyone to go to MyFantasyLeague - which offered everything I could possibly need and then some in terms of league configuration, but was a nightmare for most of the people in my league. The drafts were riddled with technical difficulties, the site was overwhelming for the majority of the players in my league, and even after I redesigned the website to simplify it and make it easier to manage, there were still many complaints about how to set lineups, do waivers, etc. since those things work differently than the ESPN/CBS/Yahoo sites that everyone is used to.

So now I'm caught in limbo. I've considered going back to CBS or ESPN and living with the warts of each, and I've considered staying with MFL if and only if I can modify the design further to basically behave like ESPN/Yahoo/CBS in terms of waivers and team page setups. If ESPN offered doubleheaders I'd definitely go back there, but since they don't...

HELP! Suggestions?

[Cards24]

STAY AWAY FROM THE LIGHT!!! Especially with your format I strongly recommend you stay with MFL. We use MFL and we couldn't be happier. A couple of years ago we decided to pay and have a custom designed website with MFL. We used a third party web designer and he did all our graphic needs. Remember this is a long term investment for your league that you will use for years to come. I think out total investment was about $15-$20 bucks per team (12 team league). Every year the template and graphics transfer so there are no new fees, unless you want new graphics added such as championship banners or new team logos. Your team owners will also feel like they have ownership in your league.

I have used http://nitrografixx.com/ for years and we are really happy with their work and customer service. They are pretty well priced and are well respected in the MFL community. There are other designers you can find under the MFL graphics forum.

Just so you get an idea here is our site with MFL http://www33.myfantasyleague.com/2012/home/21575#0

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Bloody Sox]

Yeah, ya know what - I had a quick thought of paying someone to do the site at MFL, but then saw the cost. But you pointed something out - it's a one time cost. This league has been going strong for 5-6 years so if I assume we can keep it going another 5-6 then the cost really works out to pennies over the long term.

Cool - thanks a lot.