College Hockey News

College Hockey News debuts today at "www.collegehockeynews.com"

College hockey has become more popular than ever, and as a result, it deserves the most professional and comprehensive coverage. We want to help fill that role, while setting high standards in the process.

The people involved with College Hockey News have over 70 combined years of experience in journalism, as writers and broadcasters. In particular, they have covered college hockey in various capacities since 1986. For more details on the people involved in this new publication, see:
[www.collegehockeynews.com]

Please feel free to pass along any thoughts or concerns. And thank you for your interest.

Adam,

Are you looking for bugs/errors? I really not trying to sharpshoot the site if it's still in development and you guys know where the problems lie, but i'm happy to help out if you'd like the feedback. So if you know where the minor problems lie, disregard the later part of this message

Broadly, I like the site a lot, and clearly college hockey can use more coverage. It feels like it has the data-driven stuff that USCHO was pretty good, but goes a lot further with recruiting, injury reporting (maybe we can all have that argument again? ) The Team History section in particular is very cool, as is the Tale of the Tape. Does this site mark the end of your work with USCHO?

So, feel free to ingore this stuff, if you want:

There's a CSS bug where sometimes the first time you load a page, it cuts off before the end. Refreshing the page causes it to display correctly. I can get this pretty consistently by visiting any section that's longer than one screenful for the first time. Mozilla Firefox 1.06

The links to players in the roster return errors.

Only the most recent article in "Recent Articles" on Cornell's team page actaully leads anywhere.

When you're viewing an article, for instance:
[www.collegehockeynews.com]
The articles in "Best Bets" all link to the article you're currently viewing.

The Cornell Recruits section needs some updating. Colin Greening's current team is Nanaimo and Blake Gallagher (Notre Dame) needs to be added.

Also, the Cornell roster reflects the current makeup of the team, but not the Captain/Assitant Captains

The Roster link on this page:
[www.collegehockeynews.com]
has a == in the query string instead of a single =, so it doesn't link to the roster correctly.

Also, on that Tale of the Tape page, the Netcast links don't go anywhere. That's fine, but it might be nice if there isn't a record in the db for these particular things, just don't create the link at all..so people aren't clicking and getting nothing (like the roster/player links mentioned above). You guys do this in the Almanac.

[www.collegehockeynews.com]
linked from
[www.collegehockeynews.com]
returns an error

When I register for an account, you're still printing debugging info
COOKIE VARS: and SESSION VARS:

and a bigger deal, when I try to sign up (again, Firefox 1.06) I fill out the form, submit, and get a blank page here:
[www.collegehockeynews.com]

Design-wise, I think that News Briefs (which I really appreciate the content of) seem a little dense. I don't know if there should be some greater demarcation between the individual items. Also, the "Archives" header bleeds over into the "Current Briefs" header.

Great info. Thanks. That's a reason why we put this announcement out on a limited basis first. ELynah are the beta testers.

By the way ... the CSS bug you referred to first, I was aware of, but have not been able to fix. Feel free to make any suggestions there.

The 2004-5 Cornell season record is missing three check marks.

Adam, how do you and the other founders of College Hockey News intend to have the web site differ from USCHO?

What's with the Clarkson color scheme?

Can you start a message board so we can discuss a college hockey video game, a Big 10 Hockey Conference, and Harvard moving to Hockey East?

[Q]adamw Wrote:

By the way ... the CSS bug you referred to first, I was aware of, but have not been able to fix. Feel free to make any suggestions there.[/q]

I don't know for sure, but I think it's related to how the page loads, and the footer in particular. You might try changing the css import statements to standard "link" format. You'd lose netscape 4.7 compatibility, but I think you'd get the CSS before it loaded the page, and then the problem might not exhibit.

Phil,

I'll look into it, but that might create other issues.


Craig,

How will we differ? Well, logically, since many of the same people involved in programming USCHO are the same at CHN, there will be similarities in the way some things work. But there is a lot there that is different. And as for content, that will just have to remain to be seen. The public will decide. And it doesn't have to be either/or.

2 other issues..so I tried to create an account again, and it told me that the account already existed, but when i try to log in it doesn't like my password. So I don't know if passwords are being recorded correctly, but it'd be nice if there was a link "Forgot Password" where you email the email address on file a hashed code or something where I can click the link to reset my password. Also It'd be nice if there was a persistant login box/link on every page.

A few things I noticed:
1) St. Lawrence and Cornell are supposedly both playing the US U-18 team on 21 Oct....St. Lawrence and USCHO both don't list the SLU game.
[collegehockeynews.com]

2) The maps are a bit off and need a little more work.
[collegehockeynews.com]
For instance, Cornell's rink is not on West Campus. More drastically, Air Force's Cadet Ice Arena is definitely on the AFA campus - which isn't even visible in the map that yahoomaps pulls up. Perhaps you should consider using multiple sources for the maps. A map of Cornell/AFA's campus provided by Cornell/AFA could more accurately indicate where the rink is for those of us who prefer to look at maps rather than driving directions.
It might also be worth putting in rinks like Albany's Pepsi Center that frequently host college hockey events.
Oh, and the map accessed here [collegehockeynews.com] is different from the one above...intentional?

3) The search bar at top is (for me) too short and only shows the top 2/3 of letters I type. This may be my FUBAR computer's fault.

4) I get a "Not found" page here: [collegehockeynews.com] when I click on the conference names here: [collegehockeynews.com]

5) When I read the articles (like [collegehockeynews.com] ), the CH Interactive bit cuts off at least one of the options (the 6th one has half a checkbox).

Other than that, I like it! It looks a little more streamlined and a little less cluttered than USCHO, more sophisticated than INCH, and with more information available than either. I'm looking forward to seeing what it'll develop into as the season goes on.

Similarly, the map for Harvard's rink is very, very wrong. Why? It's not in Cambridge, it's in Allston.

Beeeej

Keep the cards and letters coming. It's appreciated.

[Q]French Rage Wrote:

Can you start a message board so we can discuss a college hockey video game, a Big 10 Hockey Conference, and Harvard moving to Hockey East? [/q]Read: Eat up all the bandwidth.

Same deal for Yost in Ann Arbor. Directions are good, but the map moves the rink from S. State to Washtenaw. Looks as if the star is showing some generic central point in AA. It's a good place to start if you're looking for a fraternity party, but nowhere near any athletic venue.

Yahoo maps is probably ok, but I notice that it seems just the city and state are being fed into the link . If you can add a street address to the link, it'd be a good first step.

If you mouse over the red star on these maps, you will see that it indicates the center of the city or town in question (not the rink or any other campus location).

The problem is that a lot of campus buildings don't have a street address. Lynah Rink, Campus Rd, Ithaca, NY turns into a star near Stewart Ave. And my other example (Air Force) does have a street address fed into the link, but I'm thinking while Air Force says it's in Colorado Springs, it may not actually be in Colorado Springs (much like the Cambridge/Allston distinction), and hence the very wrong star.

Adam, you should probably double-check all the map links with people that actually go to rink on a regular basis.

I usually use the campus maps on the school's website to find the rinks.

[Q]Townie Wrote:

I usually use the campus maps on the school's website to find the rinks.[/q]
This is particularly useful for cases like Princeton, where the school's website says things like "Take the next left... this road is not labeled and has no name, but trust us and take it."

Were there games today??? The schedule on your page seems to show that:

[www.collegehockeynews.com]



Edit: It appears fixed now.

And actually, the tv schedule might be wrong...as the Michigan/Quinnipiac game brings up a window that says it's on CSTV...bringing me running excitedly downstairs and and finding that CSTV is now showing women's volleyball. And there is no mention of any hockey on today's CSTV schedule.
And since I'm lazy..how about a general list of all the games on tv in one place instead of a separate window for each game?

The Television popup window now has a link to take you to the entire upcoming TV Schedule ... and that link is also permanently on the front page.

Makes sense for the "location" link for the school but not for the link next to rink and directions thereto... It may not work for all links to rink locations, as other posters have noted, but yahoomaps will place the red star over a specific address, if you enter that information. Easy link to create...

Can you make the TV and radio schedule information available in some way that doesn't depend on JavaScript? (My Mozilla scripting is acting funny at the moment, plus it's considerate web design not to keep people out of parts of your site.) Also, while you're at it, it'd be nice to add a "GO" button next to the team pull-down menu and point it at a trivial CGI script rather than relying on client-side scripting. (This is a pet peeve associated with many sites, including USCHO and Loyola's website.)