OhioBasketball.net: Looking for new web hosting options

• thePITman

  

  For my site, www.ohiobasketball.net/canton, I have used DiscountASP.net ever since I converted it to a data-driven web site with MS SQL backend. However, they recently upped my annual fee to $255/yr. I might get $100 every 2 years from AdSense, so I was fine with paying the old fee 'cuz I was doing what I enjoyed. But $255 is considerably more.
  
  Does anyone have any recommendations for where I could switch my hosting service that supports MS SQL (so I don't have to change my Database)? Or do you have any other suggestions? A friend of mine recommended learning JSP (I already use it at work a little bit), converting my web site, and hosting my own server (w/ Amazon web services). The cost is considerably lower for this, but the start-up is large with finding a dedicated machine, learning/converting to JSP, creating new DB, etc.
  
  Any thoughts and/or recommendations are appreciated! At some point I need to make a financial decision of whether or not it's worth running my web site anymore, even though I know lots of people depend on it.
• thePITman

  

  CALLING ALL WEB DESIGN GURUS! Please read the following (end-state, best-case for my web site redesign)
  
  I'll try to give some background and work towards where I want my site
  to be in the end.
  
  My web site is www.ohiobasketball.net/canton (and /wooster, which is
  the same as /canton but a for different district). Right now my site
  is data-driven with a MS SQL Database that has some tables for teams,
  games, etc. Every year before the season starts, I track down complete
  basketball schedules for over 80 boys basketball teams, and take a
  week to enter them all in by hand (over 1,600 games).
  
  Then during the season, I track down scores every game night. I have
  to go into Microsoft Visual Web Developer (where I house/modify my
  DB), update the scores, exit VWD, connect to my FTP site, copy the MDF
  database file over, log into DiscountASP interface, and "attach" the
  MDF to the server. Then the scores are all updated. This is a hassle.
  Also, sometimes I have the same game entered twice in my DB if both
  teams are ones that I cover, so when entering scores, I have to find
  both instances of the same and and enter the same scores.
  
  Ultimately, I want to have some sort of username-based online entry
  system where I (or those I authorize, such as coaches or media) to log
  into my web-based interface to either enter schedules/games or update
  scores. This would save me loads of time! You'll see each team has a
  schedule (http://ohiobasketball.net/canton/archbishophoban.aspx) but
  there's also a page with all the scores I'm missing
  (http://ohiobasketball.net/results/missing.aspx). I'd want both to
  have the option, depending on the user's security, to update scores.
  
  Something else I'd love, in a best-case scenario, is a game-entry
  process that has auto-filtering. What I mean by that is, if I start
  typing a school's name, it's searching the TEAMS table in realtime
  (has all OHSAA schools), filtering on what I'm typing. Then when I
  click the team I want from the list, it uses the team_id column. That
  way if I can link two teams to the same game by their ID, I only have
  to enter the game once and it shows up on both teams' schedules, and I
  only update the score once, etc.
  
  As far as I know, I cannot do this with MS SQL. And even if I can, I'm
  not sure where to even start with Visual Web Developer. Do you have
  any ideas or thoughts on how I could approach this scenario? If not,
  that's fine. But if you do, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
  Thanks!
• thePITman

  

  It's been decided... I'm moving, redesigning, and renaming my web site.
  
  OhioBasketball.net will be moved to PITmanStats.com sometime around August.
  My DII Canton and DIII Wooster district sites (OhioBasketball.net/canton and OhioBasketball.net/wooster) will be subdomains of PITmanStats.com (canton.pitmanstats.com and wooster.pitmanstats.com or something like that).
  Also, the Triway team web site will be moved from OhioBasketball.net/triway to TriwayBasketball.com
  
  Again, this won't be taking effect at least until August. I have tons of work to do until then, but wanted to give a heads up to those who use my sites.
• thePITman

  

  Today I released the blog portion of my new web site, www.PITmanStats.com.
  District tournament pages to follow.
• THE4RINGZ

  

  Great looking new site, I am in the process of joining, and I bought you some coffee.
• thePITman

  

  Thanks, Ringz!