Help for a new commish

gollum65 · 08-07-2008, 12:18 AM

Hi guys,

I'm in the process of setting up my first online league as a commish. I'm currently in a couple of online leagues, so I understand how they work from the GM side of things. But I have some questions from the commish side of things.

1: I'm pretty good at setting up web sites, and I already have a decent one in the works. But I'm lost as far as what files to export out of OOTP and into what folders? I've got an exports folder and a reports folder setup and the game can connect to it fine, but I'm not 100% positive they're supposed to be in my "public html" folder, or if they should be "hidden" somewhere such as a cgi-bin folder or something.

2: Regarding what files to export, if I have the game build a league file (about 28 MB), it takes about an hour to upload to my web hosting server, which I admit is a bit slow, but an hour for 28 megs? And am I supposed to unzip the folder when it lands on the web hosting server or can the game access it even as a tar.gz?

3: If I go through the whole reports building deal, it puts together something like 4500+ files. Is that right? Do I have to build a 100% complete report setup every time I update? Again, it takes forever to upload anything that big, even if I ftp it up myself and then unzip.

4: I'm trying to setup Getch's great online util suite. It's asking me for the export directory, and the readme file he wrote states that the .csv files should be hidden in an export folder inside the cgi-bin folder. This is another case of an export of .csv files being very large and taking up a lot of time to upload. Do I have to export all the .csv files every time, or can I get away with using just some of them in order to have the utilities working as intended?

And yes, I've read the whole section in the manual about online leagues, and that did get a lot of my questions answered. But the things I'm asking about are confusing the heck out of me.

If I have to spend a whole day exporting & uploading 4 times a week just to try to run an online league, what's the point?

Thanks in advance!

satchel · 08-07-2008, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gollum65

2: Regarding what files to export, if I have the game build a league file (about 28 MB), it takes about an hour to upload to my web hosting server, which I admit is a bit slow, but an hour for 28 megs? And am I supposed to unzip the folder when it lands on the web hosting server or can the game access it even as a tar.gz?

When an owner chooses "Load Online League File," his OOTP9 game downloads the .tar.gz from the league's server and does the extraction itself. So don't unzip the .tar.gz yourself on the server, it's not necessary, and OOTP9 is looking for that .tar.gz league file.

Are you using the in-game ftp function to upload your league files and reports to your server? My experience is that OOTP9 transfers files more slowly than third-party ftp programs. You can manually upload the league file by grabbing it from your league's import_export folder and uploading it to the proper folder on your website; that's always been quicker for me. So far, I've used Filezilla and LeechFTP as my ftp programs, and it takes me about 15 minutes to upload a 50MB league file. I'm on DSL with an "upload speed" of about 400 kb/s according to Speedtest.net.

f.montoya · 08-07-2008, 07:26 AM

Regarding your 3rd question, if you are archiving, uploading and unzipping on the server and it's still taking an unreasonably long time, I'd look into upgrading to a better internet service. In my online league, I have many more files than you do and it typically takes about 30 seconds to upload via FTP and about 5 seconds to unpack on the server.

On your first question, You need to create two public folders on your server, one for the reports, which is all the nice web pages that the game produces. And you'll need another for the league file(the team exports will find their way into this folder as well). Make sure you configure the FTP information n the game exactly as you have the folders on your server and the game will take care of the rest. After each sim, run your reports, archive, upload and unzip. Point your browser to the yoursite.com/reports/news/html folder and you should see your reports. Also after each sim, Create, archive and upload the league file, including any box scores and logs you want. That's basically all you need to do. You should never unzip the league file on the server. Your league members can download the whole thing easier if it's been archived.

gollum65 · 08-07-2008, 08:39 AM

Thanks for the answers guys. Those help a lot. I'll switch to using my 3rd party FTP for the actual uploads and hope that'll take care of some of the slowness.

Regarding the reports, are there any reports that aren't needed on a weekly basis? I'm just looking to lessen the amount of data I have to export and upload.

Also, late last night I did figure out most of Getch's utility and have it mostly working. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I have to export and upload the history files each week, which seem to be the biggest .csv files of the group?

satchel · 08-07-2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gollum65

3: If I go through the whole reports building deal, it puts together something like 4500+ files. Is that right? Do I have to build a 100% complete report setup every time I update? Again, it takes forever to upload anything that big, even if I ftp it up myself and then unzip.

You could easily have 4500+ files when you generate reports. I have a 64-team league (one 16-team major league and three levels of minors) with about 1500 players, and my initial report generation makes about 4000 reports.

You don't have to generate a full set of reports each time, and you can toggle which reports you want to make (you've probably already seen that), but the exact reports you want to re-make each time is up to you. Some report pages won't change much from sim to sim during the course of one season, I'm not sure which ones, but some History pages aren't going to change until the season flips.

rasnell · 08-07-2008, 11:52 AM

You could turn off the images setting for your reports and for the league after the first time all of them are uploaded. They will stay on your web site and future transmissions will not send those massive numbers of files.

Also make sure that you've set to restrict the number of days that game logs and box scores are shown -- I'm at 31 days.

You can then set the images folder separately on your site and let the GMs access the separate player photos on their own if they want to add it to their game. This avoids having to transmit with the league file or reports. (Repeating: You need to send them the first time so they remain on the server so reports show photos).

gollum65 · 08-07-2008, 12:11 PM

Thanks guys. Think I'm getting the hang of it. This morning I simmed a week and exported and it took about an hour to complete the entire process of .csv exports, league file export, and reports. So that's much better.

Now if I can just get all of Getch's utils to work right.

08-07-2008, 12:18 AM	#1
gollum65 All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 925	Help for a new commish Hi guys, I'm in the process of setting up my first online league as a commish. I'm currently in a couple of online leagues, so I understand how they work from the GM side of things. But I have some questions from the commish side of things. 1: I'm pretty good at setting up web sites, and I already have a decent one in the works. But I'm lost as far as what files to export out of OOTP and into what folders? I've got an exports folder and a reports folder setup and the game can connect to it fine, but I'm not 100% positive they're supposed to be in my "public html" folder, or if they should be "hidden" somewhere such as a cgi-bin folder or something. 2: Regarding what files to export, if I have the game build a league file (about 28 MB), it takes about an hour to upload to my web hosting server, which I admit is a bit slow, but an hour for 28 megs? And am I supposed to unzip the folder when it lands on the web hosting server or can the game access it even as a tar.gz? 3: If I go through the whole reports building deal, it puts together something like 4500+ files. Is that right? Do I have to build a 100% complete report setup every time I update? Again, it takes forever to upload anything that big, even if I ftp it up myself and then unzip. 4: I'm trying to setup Getch's great online util suite. It's asking me for the export directory, and the readme file he wrote states that the .csv files should be hidden in an export folder inside the cgi-bin folder. This is another case of an export of .csv files being very large and taking up a lot of time to upload. Do I have to export all the .csv files every time, or can I get away with using just some of them in order to have the utilities working as intended? And yes, I've read the whole section in the manual about online leagues, and that did get a lot of my questions answered. But the things I'm asking about are confusing the heck out of me. If I have to spend a whole day exporting & uploading 4 times a week just to try to run an online league, what's the point? Thanks in advance!

08-07-2008, 07:26 AM	#3
f.montoya Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 6,076	Regarding your 3rd question, if you are archiving, uploading and unzipping on the server and it's still taking an unreasonably long time, I'd look into upgrading to a better internet service. In my online league, I have many more files than you do and it typically takes about 30 seconds to upload via FTP and about 5 seconds to unpack on the server. On your first question, You need to create two public folders on your server, one for the reports, which is all the nice web pages that the game produces. And you'll need another for the league file(the team exports will find their way into this folder as well). Make sure you configure the FTP information n the game exactly as you have the folders on your server and the game will take care of the rest. After each sim, run your reports, archive, upload and unzip. Point your browser to the yoursite.com/reports/news/html folder and you should see your reports. Also after each sim, Create, archive and upload the league file, including any box scores and logs you want. That's basically all you need to do. You should never unzip the league file on the server. Your league members can download the whole thing easier if it's been archived. __________________ Fidel Montoya Asahi2 Baseball League ex-Commissioner(Historical League Since 2004) Ex-Web Host Current Mod Maker??

08-07-2008, 11:52 AM	#6
rasnell Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Frankfort, Kentucky Posts: 3,746	You could turn off the images setting for your reports and for the league after the first time all of them are uploaded. They will stay on your web site and future transmissions will not send those massive numbers of files. Also make sure that you've set to restrict the number of days that game logs and box scores are shown -- I'm at 31 days. You can then set the images folder separately on your site and let the GMs access the separate player photos on their own if they want to add it to their game. This avoids having to transmit with the league file or reports. (Repeating: You need to send them the first time so they remain on the server so reports show photos). __________________ Charlie Root won more games for the Cubs than any pitcher (201), yet was remembered for one pitch to Babe Ruth. Find out more about the 1929 World Series in my book, "Root for the Cubs: Charlie Root and the 1929 Chicago Cubs." See the web site at www.rootforthecubs.com. The book is at http://www.amazon.com/Root-Cubs-Char...t+for+the+cubs. Beta tester, OOTP 2007-2023 and iOOTP 2011-2014.

08-07-2008, 08:39 AM	#4
gollum65 All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 925	Thanks for the answers guys. Those help a lot. I'll switch to using my 3rd party FTP for the actual uploads and hope that'll take care of some of the slowness. Regarding the reports, are there any reports that aren't needed on a weekly basis? I'm just looking to lessen the amount of data I have to export and upload. Also, late last night I did figure out most of Getch's utility and have it mostly working. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I have to export and upload the history files each week, which seem to be the biggest .csv files of the group?

08-07-2008, 12:11 PM	#7
gollum65 All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 925	Thanks guys. Think I'm getting the hang of it. This morning I simmed a week and exported and it took about an hour to complete the entire process of .csv exports, league file export, and reports. So that's much better. Now if I can just get all of Getch's utils to work right.