Hello,
Long time 2+2'er first time poster in this forum. Figured this would be the best place to start given my description of the task.

I would like to create something similar to the pokerstars (or any sites) tournament lobby where I can have a database of events that are displayed in a nice GUI. I would like it to be web based so the Users don't need a client.

For now if a user clicks on an event, all I want it to do is display a basic description and external link so nothing too complicated.

Really I just need to know where to start. I have a BS in Comp Sci from 8 years ago, but I did something completely unrelated for the 8 years since. I refreshed my coding skills last year so I'm confident in my ability to do this once I get pointed in the right direction.

Thanks in advance.

It would be very straightforward to set up a site that displays a list of events with each event linking to some type of event page. Depending on future expectations and desired look and feel, this could be accomplished with strictly html/css and whichever backedn language you're most comfortable. I'm personally writing a lot of python lately, so I would try out tornado serving up static html to start.

Here's a simple jquery example https://jsfiddle.net/uzme510k/

It's pretty close to the same no matter how you do it.

Could probably build this in rails in a few hours.

The easiest way for someone with no experience would be to do it all front end and probably jquery to handle the clicks and creation of the description. This is assuming you don't need routing i.e. the URL will be static and doesn't need to reflect the state of what is or isn't clicked. Start with something like the HTML, CSS, and jquery courses on Codecademy. You will of course need some sort of web server and db to host this. You have a pretty long road ahead of you to get this out.

odin handles getting the webserver set up with heroku, so that ain't no thang

Thanks, looks like a good simple version of what I need.

Would rails give me something a little more dynamic than a static html/css. I did the code academy rails course so I'm familiar with the basics just don't remember the use for it which is pretty much the problem I'm having.

rails would handle all the back end stuff, like saving edits to your database, pretty effortlessly for a simple app like this. You'd probably want a front end framework to make the actual page more interactive

If your lobby needs to continually update with information about the events, like players entered in a tourney, then you're probably screwed. I guess you could poll on an interval, but that's pretty ugly.