Well, I think some people here know or have visited a blog called "japanese footballers around the globe". Indeed, even before that site (who doesn't exist anymore) was created I had that idea in my mind. The idea is about creating a website that keeps it up with the latest news... and something more. I don't really want to make it only a blog, but some kind of "archive" about stuff too. Sure, often there's already Wikipedia for that stuff. But one thing is having things fragmentated, and one is about having a quick and friendly menu like "AFC" or "World cups" or "Players in Europe" and there you get all the stuff about Japan's performances, along with videos, etc. How many people have seen Okano's goal against Iran? How many people have even heard of Kamamoto? I even know many people that have no japanese family bonds or don't live in Japan but are still interested in their football for many reasons. We could even manage to get some media attention, who knows? It would of course be very social (site-facebook and twitter- instant time posts, etc). We could create another forum too, since the users will probably be different than the ones here but that can be discussed. (note: I have no intention of "stealing" users from here AT ALL nor I care) Why I'm talking about this here? Because I know that there are many passionate people about japanese football here. a little FAQ: Q: So it's going to be written in english? A: No! I plan to make it in english and many other languages! I know that there are wordpress plugins that allow you to switch in a second from a language to another on the site. Or if anyone thinks that Joomla\whatever is better, we can discuss it. I don't mean like Inter's official site. I mean an on-the-fly language button switch that can be done in any moment, and in any page of the site. Of course, it's not important that everything is available in other languages. That's up to who's taking care of it. For example, I can write in good italian and translate stuff almost every evening. Q: I already come here for news and stuff, why should I care? A: Because this place is still kinda intimate. And I personally like it that way. We keep talking about things and posting news, but we don't spend pages on talking about Zac's new haircut or nothing. Q: Ok, so what exactly is the purpose of this project? A: It's very simple: it's about making japanese football more known, with lots of "secret" informations (who the hell knows that there's a japanese player in Barcelona's cantera out there? ) and having a good "recap" place of its history. Q: What about the graphics and the structure of the site? A: Well, I admit that while I know how to run a wordpress site for example, I'm absolutely incapable on the graphical side. So I would have to ask for your help! Q: Cool, can we make some money off this? A: Actually, it would be nice to repay at least the server costs. But I'm afraid that that must be done through donations. The reason is that I know that google ADS for example is very strict, so if we were to post copyrighted youtube videos or heck even a random photo of a player they could disallow the service. At the same time, I know for example about videogaming blogs that post stuff and feature non invasive ads so there may be some way? I'm not really doing this to make money at all outside that costs, to be fair. So, here's what I would need - people skilled in foreign languages. - help with translating videos\articles from japanese. You don't have to translate 5 pages article. You can even sum them up with 10 words. Remember, it's just about keeping people informed. That way, things can then be translated from english to other languages. - we would have to discuss about its name and where to buy the domain. I can offer to register it with my data and even pay all its cost for it, since I'm quite passionate about this and this way I would always do my best to keep it updated. Note that this doesn't mean that I'm going to be the super-admin and you the poor users that work, lol. Of course, trusted people would have access to the most important things, while others could just write stuff, etc. So, what do you think? I know it sounds like mad work but we can take all the time we wish. Nobody's running behind us. My idea was to open the site before the 2012/2013 football season.
I am always willing to help people and since I am trying to inform people about Japanese Football in my own country naturally I'll help with this as well
Thanks! I hope to get as many people as possible on board. It doesn't matter if people do nothing for a week and then come up and write something later. It's not a work! Blue-san, may I ask what languages do you speak? Also, I just had a cool idea. For the section about the japanese in Europe, we could have an interactive geopolitical map of Europe. Then you click on a nation, and get to the players' page.
Nice idea! That "japanese footballers around the globe" blog vanished in thin air, too bad. I can help translate articles from english to portuguese. Also, other brazilian user from BigSoccer (GunnerTNB) runs a blog about japanese football in portuguese http://globoesporte.globo.com/platb/futebol-no-japao/
Thank you! Of course, I don't want to "steal" stuff from other blogs that many people passionately run and feel as "their". This means that, if also Gunner wanted to help, he could also post the very same articles on the website, but along with a link of his very own blog at the beginning of the article (like: taken from...) . Of course, he can also decide to not share them, but I think that he would also benefit of this. My personal sentiment is that it would be nice and somewhat "new" to concentrate more users, from different languages and cultures, on the same website, sharing the same interest. Of course, the goal is to make much more than a blog . edit: Actually, I think that we could even have a section on the right with links to other blogs\websites on the matter. Like, affiliations.
Wonderful idea!!! We need a site like the one you painted in your mind a lot! especially now that Japanese football players are going to become famous, thanks to Kagawa move to MU, and that a lot of them are coming in Europe. I'm not very skilled in graphical design or site making stuff but I can translate all the articles in Italian, my mother language, if you will like to have even this language in your site. I'm waiting for news about this!
I speak English, Serbian,Croatian, Slovenian I would not boast about my French, German or Japanese though I learned them, am still learning Japanese as it is
do you want to make your own website ? Because I have a full fledged website about japanese, longing for english content,with a design, an architecture etc that could host everything you want. http://www.nippon-ganbare.com/
ooh that's really good Saku! Didn't know about this, though I can't read french... Well, I don't know though... The name is really nice actually, though I was thinking about something more generic and easier to be tracked on google (japanesefootball, japan-football, nippon-football, etc). But that's no big deal. It's true that we would have to change the architecture a little to achieve the multi-language project. The main obstacle here is that, well, the site is in french. While we could install the plugin ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/qtranslate/ if you want to give it a try!) but the main home page would obviously remains the french one, with its buttons and stuff, unless you're willing to change your site and its original goal. I don't know, it depends on you! We could discuss this, also with the other people who are interested in the project too. Also, the way the news are handled now looks a bit, I don't know how to express this, but they are a little ammassed right now The graphic is very very nice though, it reminds me of the J League's mascots (and no I don't hate them as some people do, I think they're nice for the kids).
Damn, I even wanted to create my own blog about Japanese soccer sometime in the past But when I realized that my bookmark list in the browser from the last 6 months contained dozens of articles of *read it later* statu I understood that I don't even have enough free time/willingness to read all those articles which I'm interested to, so how the hell I could translate that for others giving proper background of Japanese football world (mainly references to past events)??? It would take also time of someone who is fluent in Japanese (basically - a Japnese person) to read an article in Japanese first and later the translated passages/abbreviations of articles to not produce any kind of incomprehension from posted articles if a few people would donate their work and time to such a site.
hehe, you're right. But there's a little difference: I'm not asking anything more than what we do here. You, me, Saku, Samurai2002, sc-f and others often post japanese articles and a quick recap of them. Nothing more than that, really. If someone wants to translate a longer article, he's welcome, but that's not really the purpose of the site, remember! Regarding the past events, you could try to write them little by little, even if it takes weeks, or months... we have no deadlines!
I mean, we can always create an english page with a small flag on the top. I don't know, our webmaster is pretty talented, he just had a kid now so he's not very present but once he's there he can basically make everything you want.
That's what the plugin I linked you to already does, it creates languages flags in a part of the site and then it's as if you were opening a different site every time (meaning that the content on the website is different for each flag) The problem is that I still sense that to get a little mainstream the home page must automatically open in english. It's just a personal feeling. I don't know if you're willing to do that... or eventually we could work with him on another website and link your site too? I know that that's a way way bigger work though...
Sure! Tell him to take his time I'm pretty excited about this, hope to get as many people on board as possible.
It could be something like "the international version of Nippon Ganbare" or a "sister site" giving references to Nippon Ganbare and other sites (like this one itself) for the articles translated beggining from Nippon Ganbare french articles. However for a better purpose we (yes.. "We" if I can be considered part of this project) need a more international title like Japanese Football Around the Globe blog had.
I'm willing to help with the project. I am a native Spanish speaker and I work as an ESL teacher. Translating from English to Spanish is actually one of the things I do best.
I like ur idea Dax! Goru no ura along with me and a couple of others had a similar project a some years ago, with the purpose of creating a portal for Japanese football. But for a numbers of reasons it didn't work out in the end, but we had the graphics layed out and prepared lots of articles before the project were cancelled. www.japanesefootballnews.com or www.japanese-football.com are domains that are available for as little as 10 dollars a year and there's probably lots of other good names as well. One question though: Are u thinking about mainly focusing on Japanese Players Abroad? or J.League / Japan NT as well?
everything, absolutely. Nipponbasse: do you want to send me some screens of those layouts, if you still have team? We could eventually use them, of course giving credits (on the site) to those who did them. The domain isn't a problem though I'm trying to find a name that has to be clear at the same time (japanese-football is) but have a little of a better impact too. I'm still thinking
Sorry, I don't have it anymore as it all got lost when I bought a new computer :/ Gora might have it though, but haven't seen him around here for a while. But it's probably better to make it from scratch though don't u think? To begin with, Wordpress is quite good and u can use that as a base and then tweak it later on to suit ur needs. As far as I know it serves as a good platform if u want to go "pro" as well, using html-script etc.
Ah, I see. Well, the problem is that I'm totally incapable of doing graphics. I could use an already existent template and tweak it but.. well. I'll try to find someone! The problem is that I can't pay the person, so it has to be someone interested...
Wow, just noticed this topic now. I can help with content in Portuguese if needed. My Japanese is just basic stuff yet (still studying), but maybe it can be helpful to translate a summary of some news.
Which blogging software do you plan on using, Dax? I think something like Wordpress would be really easy to set up and it has a lot of customizable themes ready to use. There are some paid themes that are really good, like Thesis. A suggestion for the name and domain name: be more creative. Something generic like Japanese Football Blog is not really interesting (IMO) and there have already been so many blogs using this generic template such as JapaneseSoccer.net (by goru), Japanese Footballing Blog UK, Japan Football blog, and the infamous Japanese Footballers Around the Globe. Examples of creative or interesting names are Sakka Nihon and The Rising Sun News (generic also, but somewhat interesting). Using such a generic name like Country_Football_Blog will not make a huge difference in becoming more prominent on Google. The searches will come more from the SEO, or search engine optimization, of the blog software you're using and the content of your blog. The Thesis theme for Wordpress that is well known for its SEO. I hope there's been some progress on this, I'm ready to give you hits (the nice kind