I created Who Broke The News? as a way to bring a community-driven statistics platform to fans of the Dropout show Breaking News. The goal was to provide a comprehensive resource for viewers to explore player rankings, review past episode details, and engage more deeply with the show's unique scoring system. Building this site required designing multiple views for seasons, episodes, and individual players, each pulling data dynamically from the backend using structured MySQL queries. I used the TMDB API to pull additional metadata, such as episode overviews and player images, and integrated that with manually curated statistics to give a richer context to each episode.
One of the main challenges was creating an interface that felt seamless while displaying dynamic data, such as the top 10 and bottom 10 player leaderboards. To tackle this, I designed a tabbed interface using AJAX, making the transitions smoother and allowing for real-time updates without full-page reloads. Another critical piece of development was implementing a robust admin area that supports the addition and modification of scores, episodes, and players. I designed this custom CMS, drawing from my experience with WordPress, but adapted it for the unique needs of this project. As a result, Who Broke The News? now serves as a central hub for fans to revisit favorite episodes, look up their top players, and follow along as new seasons are released.
