A fantasy league website for everything your platform doesn't keep
The platform where your league plays keeps this season's scores. It doesn't keep the league: the constitution, every past champion, the trophy, the last-place punishment and ten years of arguments. A league homepage holds those. Scores and standings are posted by hand from your platform, because the site can't pull live sports data.
What the league site is for
Long-running leagues outlive platforms, commissioners and group chats. Records end up scattered across screenshots, old emails and one person's memory. A fantasy football league website is the permanent record: the place where a rule dispute gets settled by pointing at a line, and where a new member can learn why the trophy has a dent in it. It sits beside the platform where you draft and set line-ups, not in place of it.
Pages a league actually uses
| Page | What goes on it |
|---|---|
| Home | This season's champion or current leader, next key date, latest write-up |
| Constitution | Numbered rules: scoring, roster sizes, trade rules and veto process, playoffs, tie-breaks, dues, what happens to an inactive manager |
| History | Every season: champion, runner-up, last place, regular-season winner, notable records |
| Managers | Each member's team names over the years, titles, and a short bio in the league's own tone |
| Trophies and punishments | Photos of the trophy and its engravings; the last-place forfeit and photographic evidence |
| Write-ups | A weekly or end-of-season recap |
| Draft | Date, order rule, venue for in-person drafts |
The constitution page earns the site its keep. Number every rule, date every amendment, and record how a change was voted on. Arguments in week 13 are shorter when the rule was written in August.
Records and write-ups as collections
Store seasons and weekly write-ups as CMS collections, edited in the dashboard. A seasons collection might have year, champion, runner-up, last place, champion's points and a note; a write-ups collection might have week, title, the recap and the matchup of the week. Each collection is served at its own address, such as /seasons/2024 and /recaps/week-7, so you can drop a link into the group chat after each round.
A weekly recap is where a league homepage gets its personality. Keep each one short, fair and funny: the top score, the worst bench decision, the trade that's ageing badly, and next week's grudge match. Rotate the writer if one person can't face it every week, with the text sent to whoever manages the site.
Scores: posted by hand
The site can't connect to ESPN, Yahoo, Sleeper or any other platform, and published pages can't embed their widgets. Standings and scores are typed in from the platform after each week, or at the end of the season for the history page. Most leagues find that end-of-season records are what they care about anyway; for live scores, everyone already has the app.
If you want something interactive, a small app can help: an all-time head-to-head table, a playoff bracket you fill in, or a scoreboard for the in-person draft night. Apps are built as one HTML document and run in a sandbox with no network, so they work from data you enter and can read the league's collections, read-only, but can't fetch live stats.
Building it
Describe it: "a site for our 12-team fantasy league, founded 2013, with a constitution, a seasons history, managers, trophy and punishment pages, and weekly recaps". Upload the trophy photos, draft-night pictures and the punishment evidence. Brutalist (Archivo) and Technical (IBM Plex Sans) suit stats-heavy pages; Playful (Fredoka) suits a league that doesn't take itself seriously. A short address on your own domain is easy to share and can be connected on a paid plan. The club website page covers clubs that meet in person.
Limits and one caution
- No live data. Scores, standings, injuries and player news can't be pulled in.
- No logins or private pages. Everything published is public; keep managers' real names and money details to what everyone's happy to share.
- No comments or trash talk threads. Keep that in the group chat.
- No dues collection on the site. If your league collects money, a payment link from your own provider works, but check the rules where you live: paid-entry fantasy contests are regulated in some places.
Questions people ask
Can the site show this week's standings automatically?
No. It can't connect to fantasy platforms. Post standings by hand, or link to the platform's league page.
Who should be able to update it?
Usually the commissioner. A Team workspace lets more than one person edit the project if the league prefers.
Can we record a rule vote on the site?
Record the result and the date on the constitution page. Run the vote itself in your group chat or the platform's poll.