Web Teams Blog

Web Teams - an update

2011-12-08T08:56:00.002Z

Sadly, for a mix of personal reasons and technical issues beyond my control, I have decided to call it a day running WebTeams.co.uk.

WebTeams.co.uk has always been an extremely enjoyable activity alongside both my day-job and bringing up my two children. However, the last three or four days have been particularly hard trying to fix server problems beyond my control.

As part of my efforts to find a solution, I decided that the time has now come to pass it on to a team of full-time web developers who can take football-website provision to the next level. I have watched Pitchero.com grow over the last few years and am very happy to pass the baton onto them. They will work with WebTeams.co.uk users to transfer data to the Pitchero system.

This is not a decision I have taken lightly. I spoke to the lads at Pitchero and then travelled to Leeds to meet with them and visit their offices. I have been very impressed with their setup. Please be patient with them and give them a little time.

The official Pitchero statement will be posted to their blog:

- http://blog.pitchero.com/

Important: WebTeams.co.uk club Webmasters should click here to view support information and check the status of their website.

- http://www.pitchero.com/_services/webteams/

If you require support please use this email address: webteams@pitchero.com

Pitchero has a great deal of features that Web Teams does not have, such as forums, video and picture uploads, commenting, the ability to update on any web browser, Twitter integration, links to official leagues etc… Visiting their offices and seeing the enthusiasm and professionalism of their staff also convinced me of their ambition to keep improving.

So a final farewell from me. Having used Web Teams myself for Northern and Wearside league football when I played and as a team coach, I know how important your websites are. I’ve had very little sleep this week trying to make sure everyone is looked after. I am confident that you are migrating to a better system. It’s been an absolute pleasure to run Web Teams since 1999 and see the websites that you have created.

All the very best,

Stephen, Web Teams

What do you like best about Web Teams?

2011-04-13T21:24:00.003+01:00

Currently Web Teams site administrators are feeding back to us through the end of year survey.

As always, we're amazed at some of the positive comments that come in - many thanks!

When asked "What do you like best about Web Teams?" you replied (selection of 25 of the comments below)...

Its so easy to update everything from scores to player stats.
Reliable service which is easy to use and fast to update.
The range of statistics that are produced
It's easy to use and looks good
The lay out and the way its updated automatically
The fact that the site automatically updates and you don't need to update player stats and league tables.
I like all of the site that main reason ive used it for last 5 season even if weve changed our name due to sponsorship ive always continued to use it in new name.
Just about everything, its a quality website. The stats obviously stand out and the ease of use
Quickness of how everything is uploaded.
GOOD FOR FOOTBALL
The amount of information with all stats etc, makes for great viewing when looking at all the little details and stats. Fantasy points are also a very good feature, which we run an award for at our presentation evenings!
The overall layout is easy to input information for me and for visitors to the site to read. this encourages repeat visits and recommendations to others.
The clarity and array of information available to the user
Defo the stats tracking for the goals and assissts.
Those unforgettable last minute winners are now genuinely unforgettable.
The immediate updating of stats once the input has been done.The website looks very professional and we have had many good comments.
Very user friendly interface
The support from Webteams with any problems. Great value for money and no advertisements flashing all over the place.
its very easy to use and it is linked to Facebook which helps get the info across to the team and fans.
Simplicity of the website but the detail behind that.
It gives you everything you need for a football teams website!
professional layout of the site. makes us look better than we are!
Simplicity to use and quickness of navigation
Prompt response when contacting about an issue.
Easy to input information. The site always looks neat and clean and uncluttered
Simplicity of use which can generate so many useful stats.

Many thanks for all of the positive comments, we'll also look at doing some enhancements based around the handful of frustrations. But please keep on spreading the word about Web Teams and help us to continue to build the community!

Web Teams a Top 10 UK site

2011-03-28T21:39:00.005+01:00

Web Teams won a top 10 Experian Hitwise Award last week.

Great to see Web Teams name in the list for the Computers and Internet - Hosting and Domain Registration industry. Especially alongside such well respected names such as fasthosts.co.uk and uk2.net.

http://www.hitwise.com/uk/2010-annual-awards

A Picture Says A Thousand Words

2011-01-27T22:38:00.005Z

Small tweak to the homepage now so that your large team picture is now shown. Over the years people's screens have became bigger and Internet connections have become faster. So now your Web Teams site looks even better, more crisp, more professional and 100% yours without any horrible adverts.

All Around The World

2011-01-09T12:23:00.006Z

Great to see so many non-UK football teams using Web Teams for their websites. A selection below...

Congratulations to Tipton Town FC

2010-10-28T18:46:00.003+01:00

A massive congratulations to Tipton Town who have reached the first round of the FA Cup!!!

Tipton Town have used Web Teams for the last five years or so.

- webteams.co.uk/tiptontownfc

Hopefully all Web Teams fans will be supporting Tipton over Carlisle Utd on Saturday 6th November:

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/fixtures/default.stm

Do People Like Your Site?

2010-09-15T20:35:00.013+01:00

The home page, news page, match report pages and squad pages now have "Facebook Like" buttons on.

This has the big advantage of getting your visitors to promote your website and your news stories to their friends. In turn, this will drive them to your site and have more people finding out about your club.

Facebook now has 25 million users in the UK. So this seems a very good way of getting others to help promote your club.

Update (16/09)

Once you click like you can then add a comment and share the link on your profile as shown in pics below. The "like" button is Facebook's new way of doing what used to be called "share".

Like and share the page

Your friends will see it and add comments

Upcoming fixtures

2010-09-13T20:41:00.005+01:00

Occasionally we get email suggestions that are nice little ideas from users of the service. Ian Brown from Pannal Sports emailed in suggestion that if there is a not a "next match report" then we should encourage the visitor to go to the fixtures page. So it's been done.

Before

After

Takes you to the fixtures page

See Who Subscribes To Your News Stories

2010-08-14T23:21:00.003+01:00

Just made a small change to the site on request of Stephen from Real Athletic. Webmasters can now go to their "Edit Your Club's Details" page and see who subscribes to news stories from their site.

The screenshot below demonstrates this:

Web Teams and Twitter and Facebook

2010-07-10T21:11:00.007+01:00

Browsing through the fantastic Web Teams sites that you set up, the trend of using Twitter.com or Facebook.com to complement Web Teams is growing. A couple of examples of this are given below:

1. Twitter

Tipton Town FC have a twitter feed giving teaser information for every Web Teams story. So they enter a story or match report in Web Teams, then they "tweet" this news. Their 100+ followers are informed that the news is live and then can go and read the story and look at the latest league table and statistics.

Web Teams is used for the official site with the best statistics and charts - but Twitter is used as an essential media promoting the latest news.

2. Facebook

If you want loads of photos and loads of informal banter back and forward between the players, then the place to do this a Facebook page for your site. Within Facebook, making this private to those in your club is just a setting to apply to the site.

Web Teams works in parallel with this as the official face of your club. Your Facebook club site is there for all of the daft stuff. Web Teams is there for the formal news items, the official league table and goal scorers stats etc...

This is demonstrated really well with the Morley Town Sunday club Facebook site:

The Front Page News Ticker

2010-07-07T23:54:00.005+01:00

In our end of season survey you said you wanted a News Ticker on your front page.

"Bring back the scrolling news ticker!"
"Have a rolling banner on home page with news"

You'll notice now there is one on your home page...

Fig 1 - The news ticker is now displayed on your home page

Fig 2. Click on a story or a match report for further information

Greatest World Cup Football Songs

2010-06-09T23:12:00.001+01:00

World Cup 1982

World Cup 1990

World Cup 1998

The World Cup Wheel and Funny Football Quotes

2010-06-04T20:50:00.003+01:00

Forget your World Cup Wall Chart - Check out the World Cup Wheel...

http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html

Also, funny things footballers say...

My parents have always been there for me, ever since I was about 7. "
David Beckham

"I would not be bothered if we lost every game as long as we won the
league."
Mark Viduka

"Alex Ferguson is the best manager I've ever had at this level. Well,
he's the only manager I've actually had at this level. But he's the best
manager I've ever had."
David Beckham

"If you don't believe you can win, there is no point in getting out of
bed at the end of the day."
Neville Southall

"I've had 14 bookings this season - 8 of which were my fault, but 7 of
which were disputable."
Paul Gascoigne

"I've never wanted to leave. I'm here for the rest of my life, and
hopefully after that as well."
Alan Shearer

"I'd like to play for an Italian club, like Barcelona "
Mark Draper

"You've got to believe that you're going to win, and I believe we'll win
the World Cup until the final whistle blows and we're knocked out."
Peter Shilton

"I faxed a transfer request to the club at the beginning of the week,
but let me state that I don't want to leave Leicester "
Stan Collymore

"I was watching the Blackburn game on TV on Sunday when it flashed on
the screen that George (Ndah) had scored in the first minute at
Birmingham . My first reaction was to ring him up. Then I remembered he
was out there playing."
Ade Akinbiyi

"Without being too harsh on David Beckham, he cost us the match."
Ian Wright

"I'm as happy as I can be - but I have been happier."
Ugo Ehiogu

" Leeds is a great club and it's been my home for years, even though I
live in Middlesborough."
Jonathan Woodgate

"I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel."
Stuart Pearce

"I took a whack on my left ankle, but something told me it was my
right."
Lee Hendrie

"I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country."
Ian Rush

" Germany are a very difficult team to play...they had 11 internationals
out there today."
Steve Lomas

"I always used to put my right boot on first, and then obviously my
right sock."
Barry Venison

"I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don't know into what
religion yet."
David Beckham

"The Brazilians were South American, and the Ukrainians will be more
European."
Phil Neville

"All that remains is for a few dots and commas to be crossed."
Mitchell Thomas

"One accusation you can't throw at me is that I've always done my best."
Alan Shearer

"I'd rather play in front of a full house than an empty crowd."
Johnny Giles

"Sometimes in football you have to score goals."
Thierry Henry

Top 50 World Cup Goals Ever

2010-05-24T21:18:00.001+01:00

Not long to go now to the World Cup. Found this video on YouTube. Make yourself a cup of tea or open a bottle of lager and sit back and watch the top 50 world cup goals ever to get you in the mood!

Archive your site ready for next season

2010-05-06T06:46:00.002+01:00

Now that the 2009/10 season is coming to an end you can now archive your site and get ready to start the 2010/11 season.

Details on how to do this are outlined at the blog post below:
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-archive-your-site.html

This is a chance to freshen up your site, put up news about summer events and permanently remove any players who may not be with your team anymore.

Thanks for the great comments!

2010-04-09T23:07:00.004+01:00

Looking through the results of our user survey, when asked what you like best about Web Teams you gave some great replies. A selection of them are below:

What do you like best about Web Teams?

"The fact you can archive the site and look back on stats from previous seasons is very handy. Keeps the memories online and alive."

"The ease of using and updating the website and the way the statistics are displayed make it very enjoyable to use. Also the fantasy stats give players an added incentive and provide great banter in the changing room."

"The instant generation of stats that would take ages for me to work out myself. They are priceless for my match previews on my website."

"So easy to use, and it creates a professional detailed site with mimimum web knowledge needed on my part."

"Easy to use and maintain, no adverts, no clutter which is great."

"How factual it is and how flexible it is to use. The lads love keeping tabs on my updates."

"The professionalism, its run very well, plus the price is good value. plus the appearance, plus the fact that thier are no adverts plus the fact all the tables etc are automatically updated"

"The way with minimum effort I can create a professional looking website that also serves as an essential tool for the Manager in terms of statistics."

"Fantastic service that the players all look forward to reading every week. Fantasy Statistics and match reports are the favourites."

"Don't have a favorite part as think the whole site is excellent."

"It's easy to use and does exactly what you want which is information for the lads and stats plus i can do stupid write ups for them to read too."

"The whole service has added an extra edge to the club as a whole. its not just about a sunday anymore, bagot can be 'looked at' within a click of a button 24/7"

"A fantastic service, which we have never used before until now, very informative and easy to use. We will be renewing our subscription every year!"

And when we asked, how likely would you be to recommend WebTeams to a friend, where 1 is not very likely and 10 was very likely - the average mark was 9.4!!!

So thanks once again for the great feedback.

We did of course ask what we need to better and what you two things you disliked most. The answers to these questions will form the basis of the enhancements we will make to the site over the next few months.

I'll post on the blog about this "hit list of improvements" in a week or two.

Please complete our Customer Survey 2010

2010-03-31T19:07:00.003+01:00

Every April we ask those with Web Teams sites for their feedback.

This feedback shapes how we enhance the Web Teams service and is extremely valuable.

To take part in the 2010 survey please logon into your site admin area and click on the main news item at the top of the page.

In the 2009 survey you told us you wanted:

More space for your reports and match reports
A simpler format for the league table
An "opt out" of the fantasty stats
The ability to hide players who leave your club through the season
The ability to add pictures of the manager, tea lady, programme seller
To be able to change the order of the site links

So we did all of the items above.

We wait now to see what your feedback will be this year. Stay tuned to this blog to find out.

Stats from Previous Seasons

2010-02-11T20:07:00.003Z

WebTeams user Ben emailed in asking if it's possible for player stats from previous seasons to be added to a WebTeams site.

At a basic level it is possible to add any additional information to a player in the description field.

However, once you use WebTeams for a second season you'll notice that the stats from the previous seasons are not lost - but your site gets richer in terms of data each season.

The screenshot below shows a player profile page showing stats from this season and the previous season.

Web Teams into its Third Decade!

2010-01-01T10:19:00.002Z

Happy New Year to everyone.

We are very proud to now take Web Teams into its third decade.

We started in the "90's", grew through the "noughties" and are now happy to look forward to the "tens" (or "teenies"?).

Web Teams trial site in 1999.

Web Teams looking great on your Mobile

2009-12-28T17:19:00.004Z

I've been playing about on my Ipod Touch looking at Web Teams and have made a few adjustments to the low graphics page.

The font size is now bigger so it is more readable in both portrait and landscape mode...

Of course, the normal site is fine when you zoom in and out in normal mode on an Iphone/Ipod too...

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year from Web Teams

2009-12-21T19:52:00.003Z

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to everyone visiting Web Teams. We wish your team all the very best for 2010!!!

Stand Out Fixture

2009-12-16T21:08:00.007Z

Dan from Tipton Town emailed in suggesting that the list of fixtures should have their own page.

We had a think about this and agreed.

So...

There is a new menu option on the left hand side of the page:

The latest fixture is displayed in your main news area of your homepage:

Clicking on either of the links will take you to the fixtures page:

Get the most out of Web Teams

2009-09-30T22:59:00.007+01:00

The Web Teams blog has been going for a little while now and we have posted more than 50 articles.

This is our main method of communicating to all of you that run Web Teams sites.

For those of you that aren't that familiar with blogs, you may wish to read the tips below. They will help you get the most of Web Teams.

1. Searching
To find blog posts of interest to you simply type in a search term and click to search.

For example, try "mobile" for stories on how to get Web Teams on your mobile phone:

2. Labels
Two the right of the blog you can click on a topic that interests you. You will see all posts about that topic.

For example, click "new development" to read all of the posts on recent developments to Web Teams:

3. Posts you may have missed
Here are a pick of 4 or 5 of our many blog posts...

Improvements to your Home Page - read about little changes we make to the site to keep on improving the service.
Google Map on your Site - embed the fabulous Google Maps tool within your site.
Customer Survey 08/09 - Results - read about what our thousands of users think of us.
Another Fund Raising Case Study - find out how you can easily make your website make money for your team.
Go Go Web Teams Gadget! - you like Windows Vista or Google gadgets? - download the Web Teams Gadget for your site.

4. Get the blog content elsewhere
You can add the Google Web Teams Blog gadget to your Google home page:

You can get the Web Teams Blog content within your RSS reader of choice:

5. Comment on the blog posts

If you have an opinion on any blog post - let us have your feedback - it only takes 10 seconds to add a comment and you can share your thoughts with the rest of the Web Teams community.

Web Teams Continues NonLeagueZone.com Support

2009-09-28T20:09:00.006+01:00

Web Teams have continued their support to the popular non-league football forum NonLeagueZone.com.

A team of six or seven dedicated non league football fans run this super community with almost 10,000 members!

Stephen from Web Teams used to be a bit of a contributor to the Northern League section of this site back in the late 1990s when involved with teams such as North Shields, Prudhoe Town and Dunston Fed.

Over the last year or two Web Teams helps with the running costs of this site and are delighted to continue to do so for the 2009/10 football season. In return, Web teams gets a banner advert at the top.

If your team or league is involved in the UK non-league pyramid and you want a discussion forum that is part of a wider community - please go to NonLeagueZone.com and get in touch with one of the moderators.

Web Teams Goes Video Crazy!

2009-09-23T20:00:00.008+01:00

Just over a year ago we allowed YouTube videos to be added to your Web Teams match reports and news items.

http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/06/post-your-videos-on-web-teams.html

Flicking through many Web Teams team sites over the weekend, I noticed that loads of sites now do this.

All digital cameras have video functionality these days and it seems many of you take video clips on the side lines, upload them to YouTube and then embed them in your Web Teams sites. Some of you even make nicely edited movies with background sound tracks and titles (presumably using Windows Movie Maker).

Flicking through the first 15 or 16 sites I came across I found the following 4 videos...

St. James AFC

http://www.webteams.co.uk/NewsItems.aspx?team=stjamesafc#id10

Centre AFC

http://www.webteams.co.uk/NewsItems.aspx?team=centreafc#id19

Hafod Ranger AFC

http://www.webteams.co.uk/MatchReport.aspx?team=hafodrangersafc&mid=match33.xml

Norton Sports

http://www.webteams.co.uk/NewsItems.aspx?team=nortonsportsfc#id51

Improvements to your Home Page

2009-09-19T09:41:00.005+01:00

The improvements to your home page outlined below will go live soon. As always, please let us know your thoughts!

Before

...and after

What are the key differences:

The latest news item has a snippet of its content on your front page. This gives your site visitors more of a "teaser" of what the story is about and encourages them to click through and read it.
The latest match also has a snippet of content now on your home page.
The titles of these two main stories are in larger text and bold - again drawing your visitors attention.
The player/staff pictures on the front are now the relevant individuals mentioned in the news item or gaining the player of the match. This means you're not seeing the same old faces always on the home page.

Remember, to keep your home page looking really good - try and add a new news item each week and make sure you add at least one paragraph as a match report when you enter your latest result.

Bohemian Rhapsody on the Danny Baker show

2009-09-14T22:56:00.002+01:00

From last year, but quite funny. The version of Bohemian Rhapsody on the Danny Baker show where Freddie's lyrics are replaced with random footballer names...

I see a little silhouetto of a man
FACEY BA LYTTLE SILVA ETO HUTH HAMANN

Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the fandango?
DIARRA BRUCE DIARRA BRUCE BRILL KANU HAMANN BRANCO

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening me
YOUNG KERR HOULT SAND BRIGHT KING VIEIRA VIERI FREI LING LEE

Galileo, galileo
BAILEY MAYO

Galileo, galileo
BAILEY MAYO

Galileo figaro-magnifico
BAILEY MAYO FIGO LAW HAGI ZICO

Google Map on your Site

2009-09-12T06:54:00.004+01:00

If you've added a post code in your site details area then you automaticaly now get a Google Map on your home page.

The pictures below show how this appears to a site visitor:

1. Click on the "map" hyperlink

2. An inline Google Map is displayed in your club details area of the page

3. All the functionality you expect from Google Maps is available - you can move it around, zoom in and out and display road map or satellite map

If you want to try this - we took the screenshots above from:

- webteams.co.uk/glenrothes

10 years of Web Teams

2009-09-07T23:22:00.004+01:00

It's now 10 years since Web Teams was formed. For a bit of a history about Web Teams see the blog post below:
- http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/05/brief-history-of-web-teams.html

But to celebrate 10 years, here are some early designs...

1. Early teaser holding page
The imagery below is from September 1999. The rest of the web world had horrible "under construction" animated gifs. We were inspired more from the Starship Troopers trailer at the cinema in the late 90s.

2. First team home page design
Again from 1999, this was the design for the homepage. Nice and simple with the main core features that Web Teams was all about: News, Results, League Table, Squad details and Stats. The Newcastle College side was the team that Pat from Web Teams used to play for in the North East Sunday League.

3. Team home page design Mk II
It was quickly decided that something more impressive was needed for the homepage and the main feature links were moved to the left hand side. An overview of the content and a team photo where quickly drafted into the main area of the page. The Wallsend Comrades side was the team that Stephen from Web Teams used to play for in the North East Sunday League. Wallsend Comrades used to regularly thrash Newcastle College :)

4. First real site
The first "real" site filled with proper data was the Durham Ladies football site for 2000/2001 season. This acted as a test site along with a number of others as the Web Teams user base slowly started to grow.

10 years has gone by very quickly. But on behalf of Pat and myself we'd like to thank all of those who use the service and make it what it is. Throughout each year we appreciate all of your suggestions for improvement and kind messages and we very much look forward to the next 10 years!

The Football Season Starts!

2009-08-09T15:56:00.002+01:00

With the start of the football league this weekend and the Community Shield today, the 2009/10 football season truly has started.

We hope all of you have your Web Teams sites ready and are looking forward to your team challenging for a league title or going on a cup run.

Click below to watch the Match of the Day goals of the season from the 2008/09. My vote was for Torres' strike, I think Glen Johnson won it.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal_of_the_Season

Sir Bobby Robson - RIP

2009-07-31T20:04:00.005+01:00

RIP Sir Bobby Robson - Legend.

One of his best moments as a manager below...

Give your Club Staff a home on Web Teams

2009-07-14T21:31:00.004+01:00

One of the most requested enhancements from you in the end of season customer survey was to be able to put pictures of your staff up and associate them with news items. You wanted to put the chairman up, the physio and the tea lady!

This is now possible by adding people to your squad and marking them as "Staff" in the drop down box.

These entries will have their one little area at the bottom of the squad page:

Visitors can click on staff members and they have their own page:

And you can associate news items with the staff members:

They will not appear in the player statistic pages. So if you do have a player-manager - please put him/her down as player and just write in the notes that they manage as well.

And yes, I support Newcastle United. The team without a manager, a chairman and an owner. All comments taking the mick will not be published!

Indicate Players who have left your Club

2009-07-14T21:21:00.005+01:00

Mid-way through a season a player may leave your club.

Now it possible to indicate this on your site so that these players are not as prominently displayed on your squad page. Also, these players will have asterisks next to their names in the stats and fantasy points pages.

To mark a player has having left your club simply tick the "Has Left Club" checkbox next to the players name in the site admin page as shown below:

Please note that you should still take the opportunity to remove players permanently from your site when you go through the archive process at the end of each season.

Generating Reports from your Site

2009-07-03T20:22:00.002+01:00

We've had a few questions from users wanting to generate end of season reports for their sites. Others have emailed in asking about taking copies of their data before they archive as a record of the season.

Well, since the start of Web Teams in 1999, we've always had the concept of generating printer friendly reports. These are simple views of your data that are fine for either printing or copying and pasting straight into Microsoft Word to format as you wish.

Just follow the steps below...

1. Click on the "printed report" link

2. Select the data you want

3. Either send to the printer or copy and paste to a word processor

Fantasy Stats - You either love them or hate them

2009-06-18T22:21:00.011+01:00

When we did our customer satisfaction survey you told us you loved the fantasy stats. Some of you also, however, told us you hated them.

What do you like least about Web Teams?

Give the option to lose the fantasy stats on setting up for the new season - its not good when teams are youth players - okay for older ones and mens teams - really dont like this bit of site and its not optional
GIVE A CHOICE ON ADDING FANTASY STATS"
remove fantasy stats as it puts some players down"
THE FANTASY STATS DOES CAUSE PROBLEMS WITH PLAYERS AND PARENTS ALIKE. IS THERE ANYWAY THIS CAN BE GIVEN AS A CHOICE OF UPDATING IF WANTED ?

What do you like most about Web Teams?

Everything really but the lads love the 'fantasy points' section
fantasy stats and all automated from entering the league results
Fantasy Stats and automatic generated table and stats
Excellent website - generally very easy to use. It has made our team much more cohesive - and the fantasy stats have really motivated the players. Keep up the good work!
Fantasy stats and the ability to print specific reports
I really like the majority of the site, how it shows all stats n fantasy stats aswell.
I like the automatic update of player stats and the lads love the fantasy stats, it bring a new dimension to Sunday mornings.
The kids love the fantasy stats and are always trying to get points. I belive this has improved the togetherness at the team and makes it a bit more fun for the team.
The fantasy points as we have a medal for the "most fantasy points" at the end of the season.
Fantasy Stats..... There is a trophy for the leader at the end of the season

So what we've done is made it nice and easy for you to opt out of the fantasy stats.

Fantasy stats will be ON by default - but from your site admin area you can click to disable them as shown in the screenshots below and they'll be hidden...

Fig 1 - Click to disable the stats

Fig 2. The stats are hidden from visitors

...and if you change your mind - you can always toggle them on again.

22.31 - time for a cup of tea and a marmite sandwich...

Common End of Season Questions

2009-05-12T23:26:00.008+01:00

At the end of each season we get a number of common questions asked:

1. What happens to my site at the end of the season?
You can archive your site from the current football season and then set up your new site for the up and coming season. See the blog post below for details:
- http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-archive-your-site.html

2. My team name is changing, can I change my website?
You can change your team name but not your website URL. This is unique to your team.

So if your team is changing from "The Red Bull FC" to "The Queen Vic FC" then you can change the name during the set up process. But you can not change webteams.co.uk/redbull to webteams.co.uk/queenvic.

The two work-arounds here are:
A. Get a top level domain name to mask the Web Teams URL - see the blog post:
- http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/06/get-proper-domain-name.html
or
B. Sign up for a new site from scratch

3. I don't know the names of the teams in my league for next season, can I still set up my site?
If you are unsure of the exact teams in your league next year - don't worry. Enter the team names you know and enter "Team 1", "Team 2", "Team 3" for those you don't. You can tweak these before the first game of the season.
Note: The same applies for players in your team - you can add "Player 1", "Player 2", etc...

4. Can I remove players who have left the club?
You can do this after you have archived and when you are setting up your site for next season.

5. My club wants more than one Web Teams site next year, can I have a club site?
Yes, see the blog post below for details:
- http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/07/get-club-page.html

Customer Survey 08/09 - Results

2009-05-04T10:38:00.014+01:00

Thanks to all who took part in our end of season survey. This brief report details what you like about Web Teams and what enhancements you'd like to see made to the service.

A. What you like about Web Teams

Our previous post on the survey gave some of the comments you made on what you like best about Web Teams:
- What you like best about Web Teams

The chart below confirms that it is the quality of the statistics (league table, player stats, goal scorer stats) that you get after entering your match data.

Fig 1. How important are the automatically generated site statistics such as league table, player and team stats

The best way to get users is through existing user recommendations. The chart below show how likely you are to recommend Web Teams to friends.

Fig 2. How likely are you to recommend Web Teams to a friend

An average mark here of 9.3 is just incredible. This relates to a Net Promoter (marketing speak :)) score of over 80 and we really, really appreciate this!

B. What Web Teams enhancements you want

The following requests were made by at least three or more users.

More characters should be allowed for news items and match reports
18 May 09 - Done - News item length increased from 2,000 characters to 3,000 and match report length increased from 6,000 to 8,000.
The league table should have a simple view by default – the advanced home and away view should appear on request
18 May 09 - Done
The fantasy stats should have an “opt out” checkbox for those teams who don't want them
18 June 09 - Done
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2009/06/fantasy-stats-you-either-love-them-or.html
Players who have left the club should be less prominently displayed on the site
14 July 09 - Done
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2009/07/indicate-players-who-have-left-your.html
It should be possible to add details and pictures of the manager, chairman, physio, tea lady and associate these club members with new items
14 July 09 - Done
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2009/07/give-your-club-staff-home-on-web-teams.html
The goal descriptions should have some new and varied content
It should be easier to move site links up and down
18 May 09 - Done

We'll try our best to implement all of these improvements for the start of next season!

Thanks once again to everyone who took the time to provide their feedback

Customer Survey 08/09 - Initial Results

2009-04-23T20:08:00.005+01:00

The Customer Survey 08/09 is now closed. Almost 20% of site administrators took the time to respond which is an amazing return for any email survey - so thank you!

We'll spend a few weeks reviewing what you have said and post a full report to our blog. But in the meantime, here is a quick list of answers you provided to the question "What do you like best about Web Teams?"

The automatic stat updates, when I only have to enter the results and each game report! its quality, well done!
No adverts. feels like it's 100% your site
Easy to use, an update can take around 5 mins but gets all tables, stats updates, layout looks professional and if site is well run can put many other websites to shame.
I think everything is excellent especially for the price but would say that the general user interface is the best thing about the service.
Excellent website - generally very easy to use. It has made our team much more cohesive - and the fantasy stats have really motivated the players. Keep up the good work!
Speed. I also use [other football website's name removed] to administer our 20 team club site. It is too slow on a weekend and keeps crashing. Your works brilliantly all the time.
I like the speed of the site and the ability to look at how other teams around us are doing. I would recommend the site to anyone.
The simple way to update the website! Takes a matter of minutes to update the whole thing, which is brilliant.
I like the automatic update of player stats and the lads love the fantasy stats, it bring a new dimension to Sunday mornings.
Everything, the service is superb, it only takes a few minutes to in-put league results and tables are updated in a flash. I always actively promote webteams sites as a super idea and everything is done for you which makes it more than value for money.
Automatically generated stats and league tables. Also the site is very easy to use (myself being the administrator for the team) I find it an excellently developed site for its practical use.
The Stats for each player is excellent, particularly like the pie chart features. all in all I think the website is excellent value for money and it’s so easy having all the averages and stats and league table automatically worked out.

Interestingly the Fantasy Stats featured just as highly in your answers to what you least liked!!! So like Marmite, some people love it - some people hate it.

What do you like least?
THE FANTASY STATS DOES CAUSE PROBLEMS WITH PLAYERS AND PARENTS ALIKE. IS THERE ANYWAY THIS CAN BE GIVEN AS A CHOICE OF UPDATING IF WANTED ?

We promise, we'll make this an optional feature next year. :)

Stay tuned for our full results!

Another Fund Raising Case Study

2009-04-22T20:31:00.005+01:00

Currently a lot of clubs are reporting difficulty in finding sponsorship money.

Mark Russell manager of Penyffordd Panthers U13s from the Clwyd League contacted Web Teams to comment on how well his club had done financially this year from EasyFundRaising.co.uk.

[Sept 2008 - Original fundraising Web Teams blog post]

Mark emailed Web Teams...

Just to let you know the easy fund-raising site we use has helped us earn £120 so far this season.

This is encouraging and shows that it can work. Here are the recent spends (screenshot below), as you can see holidays and insurance boost the total. This is the area we tend to promote. I've realised the LOVE FILM trial pays £8 per person and currently trying to get people registered. Without the big spends we'd probably be looking at £40 which is still ok.

If we could get over £150 by the end of the season this will help replace any kit or training equipment we need as I guess in the current climate it's going to be harder for clubs like ours to find local sponsorship which we have always relied on in the past for new Home & away kit's.

Therefore the more the parents and families of players can do to help generate funds the better position we will be in.

As for the team we've done well this season. If we win the remaining two matches Saturday & Tuesday we will either finish 2nd or be in a play-off for 2nd place. Potentially we could still win the league as the current leaders have three games left (including a trip to our home ground) but only need a single point to clinch the title (Hawarden Rangers). We have been the only team to beat them this season in the league (last week 1-0 away) and also the only team to beat them x2 last year in the league, when they won it.

Only lost 3 games and one draw one but you can only afford to drop 6 points in our league to stay in contention.

This shows that the £15 charge for Web Teams can be easily pulled back through your website throughout the season. In fact in this case ten times over!

Pennyford Panthers are an under 13s team with a strong website that has encouraged parents and fans to support the club. An occasional news item and a link to the EasyFundRaising site seems to have done the job:
Pennyford Panthers News Item

If anyone else has any good or bad experiences with EasyFundRaising.co.uk - please leave your comments below for the benefit of other teams.

Crouchy - Pull out the Rope!

2009-04-06T20:51:00.005+01:00

What must be the funniest football moment on TV since Ali G interviewing the Beckhams.

James Corden pokes fun at England's Peter Crouch for Comic Relief...

Crouchy. When I look at you, everything tells me that you should be rubbish at football. And yet you're brilliant. You know why? Because of this: The Robot, yeah? Where's it gone? You were hitting them right, left, centre, all over the park, when that was there. I know what's happened.

You’ve started to fear The Robot.

You’ve got to let The Robot fear you.

I’m talking like staple, tray service, swivel, can, open, drinkety-drink drink, yeah? What about some of these, a few turns in there. If you score a hat-trick, pull out the rope, pull out the rope, yeah?

Please take part in our Customer Survey

2009-04-01T18:49:00.003+01:00

We are now running our customer survey. If you have two minutes spare, please answer the 7 or 8 questions for us to help make our site better.

To take the survey, (1) log on to your website and then (2) follow the link at the top of the page.

From our survey results at the end of last season we made a number of improvements. These were detailed at the time at the link below.

The summary of results from our 2007/08 survey

Many thanks to all of our Web Teams users - your feedback, as always, is really appreciated

More Fund Raising Ideas

2009-02-26T22:38:00.009Z

One or two of you using the EasyFundRaising service have emailed in to say you have just received a cheque for cash you made in the fourth quarter last year. One team actually made over £100 which is pretty good for a three month period.

One idea for those using this service is their "Free Funds" section.

This basically is a list of merchants who'll pay your club money for simply requesting a brochure, siging up for a free trial, completing a survey etc... For not even spending money.

For more information visit EasyFundRaising and click the "Free Funds" tab at the top of the page.

http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk

For previous WebTeams blog posts on this subject see below:

UEFA Badges Quiz

2009-02-25T18:38:00.003Z

There is a good little football quiz doing the rounds by email at the moment.

How many out of 100 badges from European clubs do you know?

Click the hyperlink or the screenshot below to download the quiz. Maybe worth printing out for the dressing room/club house/coach to an away game!

Download UEFA Badges Quiz

Any similar quizes - please email them in to us.

Web Slice up your life!

2009-02-01T23:06:00.007Z

Last week the release candidate of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was released and it contains a nice new feature known as a web slice.

Needless to say, a few days after this release, Web Teams has been enhanced to take advantage of this. :)

Please note, you must be using IE8 to take advantage of this functionality.

Should you be using IE8, you'll notice that when you hover your mouse over the top header on a team's home page or on a player page you'll get a green box appear. Click on the green square and you'll be prompted to add the page as web slice.

The screenshots below show this:

Once added as web slices then you can quickly access a "slice" of this page by clicking the button to the top of your browser. In addition, when the page is updated, the button will appear with bold text.

The screenshots below show the web slices being activated by the user even though they are not on the Web Teams site.

All feedback appreciated and we hope those trying out IE8 like this new feature!

Display your Web Teams Data from your site elsewhere

2009-01-25T21:35:00.008Z

WebTeams user Richard Ault contacted us asking if he could use the Web Teams data on his other personal home made website for his club.

We have never really advertised how to do this, but through use of the Web Teams Google Gadget this is actually very easy for webmasters of personal sites who know a little HTML.

Our Google Gadget page gives a nice user interface to achieve this:

- Web Teams Google Gadget

The screenshot below shows that you should click the "Get the Code" button and then copy and paste this into your HTML.

If any users are interested in taking this idea of syndicating content further (maybe player pages?), let us know. If there are three or four interested then we'll do a bit more work on this.

Awareness Test

2009-01-03T17:08:00.002Z

With the festive period now out of the way, a quick awareness test below to check everyone is back to their sharpest.

Concentrate fully please.

Count how many passes the white team make.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2008-12-16T22:53:00.005Z

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Web Teams webmasters and all visitors to Web Teams.

We hope you manage to get some games in over the holidays and the weather isn't too bad (see pictures below). All the very best with your clubs in 2009!

The Best Football Scene in a Movie

2008-12-07T18:35:00.000Z

What is the best football scene in a movie?

Here are a few clips below...

1. Kes

Anyone over 30 in the UK will remember PE lessons like this. No coaching, just a school kid of a PE teacher playing out his dreams on the football pitch.

Billy Casper is last one in the line up to be picked for the team, the teacher fills him with confidence "Casper, I've got to have you. Come on..."

2. The Great Escape

A collection of the football clips to music below. Pele and Sylvester Stallone in the same film!

3. Bend It Like Beckham

Keira Knightley before she became a Hollywood superstar and Jonathan Rhys Meyers before he became a young Henry VIII.

4. Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Every Christmas there used to be a Disney special on ITV with clips from different films, this football clip from Bedknobs and Broomsticks was always there.

Can anyone else think of any great football scenes from movies?

Small Tweaks to the Match Report Page

2008-12-03T21:51:00.007Z

A few tweaks have been made to the match report page. The screenshots below show the "before" and "after".

Any comments on this please reply to this blog post.

Before...

...and after

So, what are the benefits of these changes?

Sometimes the previous layout spread across the browser wider than the banner at the top of the page. Check out the "Before" picture above. This was always a minor irritation.

When a large match report was written it didn't wrap around the squad details area. Check out the white space to the bottom left on the "Before" picture above. This white space continued to the bottom of the match report.

If a match video was embedded in the match report, it was very squashed on the page. Check out the screenshot below to see this looking much nicer.

Great video

On a final note, check out how the webmaster from Soham Town Rangers has embedded the video above on his match report page:
http://www.webteams.co.uk/MatchReport.aspx?team=sohamtownrangersfc&mid=match54.xml

A great record of a super strike from Soham's Paul Jones.

For more details on how to add video content to your match reports and news items see:
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/06/post-your-videos-on-web-teams.html

Please let us know what you think when we make small changes like this.

Your Pictures On The Homepage

2008-12-01T22:36:00.006Z

A couple of weeks ago we asked if you'd like a picture of your team on our homepage:
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/11/your-team-on-webteams-front-page.html.

Since then we've had some really good pictures emailed into us. However, rather than pick just one, our homepage now randomly picks a picture every time you visit:
http://www.webteams.co.uk

If you think you have a picture as good as one of those below and would like it on our homepage then please email it to support@webteams.co.uk - it must be good quality and not have a huge sponsorship board in front of it :)

A selection of some of the best photo's from you is below...

Sam from Horsley and Clandon FC sent this picture in. Non league football at its best
webteams.co.uk/horsleyclandon

Niki from Leeds City Juniors FC sent this great picture in. A super shot of youth football. Check out their site too for some excellent use of videos within their news items.
webteams.co.uk/leedscityjuniorsu13a

Liz from Poppleton Ladies FC sent this shot in. Even though it looks utterly freezing, everyone still has a smile on their face!
webteams.co.uk/shlfc

WebTeams.co.uk in the Top 50

2008-11-26T22:20:00.006Z

Sites such as Alexa.com give rough statistics on how many visitors a website gets.

There are also companies out there who package together statitics such as these into categories and sell these to marketing/advertising companies.

Well we have managed to get hold of the list of the UK's most popular football sites in October 2008 and are delighted to see that WebTeams.co.uk is in the Top 50!!!

A summary of the results are below. The values are in "absolutely unique visitors per month".

1. BBC.co.uk/Football - 5.8 million unique visitors - the biggest and best!
2. SkySports.com - 3.8 million
3. PremiumTV.co.uk - 2.0 million (these are the chaps who do Virgin Media and official sites for Man City, Sunderland, West Ham etc.)
4. 365MediaGroup.co.uk - 1.8 million (these chaps do football365, teamtalk, rivals etc.)
5. UK.Eurosport.Yahoo.com - 1.5 million
...
7. The Sun Sport - 853,000 (top of the list for the tabloids)
...
8. ManUtd.com - 743,000 (top of the list for the official club sites)
...
11. Guardian Sport - 567,000 (top of the list for the broadsheets)
...
45. NUFC.com - 145,000 (top of the unofficial club websites)
...
and
48. WebTeams.co.uk - 129,657 absolutely unqiue visitors (actual figure, not estimated).

So, we've just managed to sneak into the top 50!

Considering how many official Premier League football websites and how many extremely well financed media outlets (from ITV to The Times) there are in the UK - we're very proud.

As a final note...

...add a few rugby, formula one, american football and WWE wrestling websites into the mix and we move down to the number 63rd most visited Sports website in the UK.

Your Team on the WebTeams Front Page?

2008-11-12T22:42:00.005Z

How would you like a photo of your team to be on the front page of www.webteams.co.uk?

We get 1 million unique visitors every year. To get your team photo or an action shot from one of your games up on the front page then please email a picture to support@webteams.co.uk by November 30th 2008.

What we want doesn't have to be perfect quality, but it must show the spirit of amateur football.

Fundraising Case Study

2008-11-10T21:57:00.003Z

A few teams have now opted to raise funds for their club using EasyFundRaising (see Make Your Website Earn Your Club Money).

Two of these are Penyffordd Panthers and Barrow Celtic Football Club

Penyffordd Panthers
The Panthers have used Web Teams for three seasons now, they get around 700 visits to their homepage each month.

Webmaster Paul Cain has decided to give the EasyFundRaising idea a go and explains,

"So far we have raised around £8 in the first month. We placed the video on the News Items and had 500 business cards printed, which we have given out to players families to try and encourage people to use it.

With Christmas coming up I'm hopeful that people will use the system when doing Internet orders as you could potentially raise about £5-£10 per month which could be £100 a year (useful to put towards additional kit, or equipment) for very little effort.

We sent out reminders when giving out letters to players for the next match, I think the key thing is getting someone to do it once (first spend) and then they see it's actually straightforward. I might try and do a simple step by step instructions for those who thinks it's going to be complicated or find another YouTube video that explains it better."

Example payments

Barrow Celtic Football Club
Barrow Celtic have also started encouraging their site visitors to use EasyFundRaising. Webmaster Stephen Quinn also believes it will be possible to make £10 a month that will help with equipment and club funds,

"...We've only just started using it, but i think £10 a month is possible in a couple of months when people get used to using it. ive advertised it on the site and also our Facebook page and will be printing some of the pre written info available on the site, for our players meeting on Saturday."

From a Web Teams point of view we see this as being a nice little idea that can supplement fundraising activities such as domino cards and betting sheets for any amateur team. It probably does need a little bit of effort in persuading players/fans/parents to go through "the system" - but it's not a bad idea to make your website earn a little money for your club.

Finally, one other thing we've noticed is that lots of Web Teams sites are posting their club sponsors within their page. Why not see if these sponsors are willing to pay £10/£20 for this advert and it may bring in a little bit more. It'll maybe help with buying some balls, or cones, or bibs, or the end of year tour to Blackpool...

If anyone other clubs have any fundraising tips - please add your comments to this blog post.

Web Teams on your Mobile Phone

2008-10-20T21:45:00.007+01:00

In the last twelve months the number of people with Internet access on their mobile phones has gone through the roof.

There will be at least one player in your team with the Internet on their mobile phone in the changing room before the game or in the pub after the game.

So from today, they can get a special version of your Web Teams site on their mobile.

To do this, it's very simple.

1. Go to your Web Teams site on the phone

2. Click the "Low graphics" hyperlink at the top of the page

3. Bookmark the site within the phone's memory

The two screenshots below show the "Low graphics" hyperlink on the full Web Teams page and then the smaller, leaner Web Teams page as it looks on a mobile phone:

The advantages of the "Low graphics" page on a mobile phone are:

1. All of the information can be seen on a small screen

2. Only the really important information is downloaded - if you have a low speed Internet connection then this is massively important.

Consider the current Tipton Town FC site http://www.webteams.co.uk/tiptontownfc

Their homepage has 48KB worth of text, 53KB of pictures and some javascript and css files to download. This is well over 100KB in size and can be very frustrating if you have a slow connection.

The equivalent "Low graphics" version is only 14KB in size. It will download around eight times quicker AND fit your mobile phone screen nicely.

If you do use your mobile phone to access Web Teams - please let us know.

If you want the facility to quickly enter news items to your site from your mobile - again, please let us know.

UPDATE (23 October)

Since this feature went live on 19th October over 300 unique visitors have been to a Web Teams page on their mobile! The Eastport South Manor news items page has proved to be the most popular so far:
http://www.webteams.co.uk/NewsItemsLowRes.aspx?team=esm

It's early days, but it's nice to know that this seems to be a successful addition to the Web Teams service:

Web Teams and Google

2008-10-13T23:23:00.003+01:00

As Google dominate the internet so much, at Web Teams we are aware of the importance of getting your site into the Google search index.

If you set up your own website from scratch it can take months to get into the Google search index and years to move up the rankings to the top results. Maybe try doing a search for "search engine optimization" (SEO) and check out how much companies pay to be high up on the Google rankings.

Well, with Web Teams, you do not have to worry about any of that. We make sure that all of our pages are designed so that they are very easy for Google to index. We have our site map registered with Google and as a top 100 UK Sports site Google spider all of our team sites regularly.

A few examples of this are demonstrated below:

1. Frequency of index
Red Hill FC, who have been with Web Teams for three or four seasons, posted a news item on Sunday 12th October. By Monday 13th October this news item was in the Google index.

2. New sites
CHESLYN HAY F.C under 11s joined Web Teams on Monday 6th October. Doing a Google search for CHESLYN HAY F.C 11s will return search results for their site (less than seven days later!)

3. Top returns
Do a Google search for Boreham Wood, the first search result is for their Web Teams site. Please note that incredibly the Web Teams site is higher on the search returns than the actual Wikipedia site for the town Boreham Wood!

Why not try this for your site? - pick a phrase from one a news item from one or two weeks ago and see how high up your site is in the Google index.

Remember other methods to move your site up the Google index include:

Get others webmasters to link to your site
Post your URL as a signature on any posts you make to newsgroups or discussion forums
Add a couple of news items and a match report each week to your site
Post your URL on your town's Wikipedia page

Make Your Website Earn Your Club Money!

2008-09-22T23:30:00.011+01:00

You have a Web Teams site, all of the players and fans visit it, how can you make the website earn your club money???

Well earlier this year we were alerted to the excellent easyfundraising.org.uk website (click logo below).

All you have to do is register your football club with their site and then whenever your players/fans shop online, up to 15% of the value of their spend comes back to your club.

Here's a link to one of their press releases on the reputable website fundraising.co.uk
http://www.fundraising.co.uk/news/2008/05/08/easyfundraising-website-raises-over-%C2%A3350000

Here's a link to register your club and get started:
http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk

In terms of the names of some of the retailers involved, here's a quick list:

If you can get 10 people (yourself included) to push 5% of an average £500 annual online spend through your club then that could be a cheque for £250.

You can promote the EasyFundraising idea through a news item on your site and of course your site links and site sponsor areas.

Update (10th November)

Check out a couple of Case Studies for sites using this idea:
- Fundraising Case Study

A Permanent Fixture?

2008-09-09T22:35:00.006+01:00

We have had 7 or 8 users telling us that they have been having problems adding fixtures to their Web Teams site in the last couple of months.

Pretty much all of these reports are from users with aol.com email addresses.

It looks pretty likely that the AOL version of the web browser was not happy for some reason with our Add Fixtures site admin page. (Technical note: pretty certain this was a security clamp down on the window.showModalDialog method).

So now we have changed the Add Fixtures page so that you enter your fixtures inline within the single page. When you are happy with what you have added, you click Submit. The screenshots below show this in action.

As this page is now pretty new, please report any unusual behaviour to us:
support@webteams.co.uk

Back to School

2008-09-08T20:30:00.005+01:00

To get to where Web Teams is today we've had good ideas and some not so good ideas.

One area of Web Teams that we worked on a few years back was the "fun" area.

Banana Football in particular was a success and for a few months got some good world wide publicity.

Play Banana Football Now!

One game however that sadly didn't ever see the light of day was Web Sums...

...until today!

The idea was to wrap up the classic Little Professor computer game from 1980 that the Blog Editor used to play as a 6 year old... and put a modern spin on things with a comedy Wayne Rooney cartoon face.

Play Web Sums Now!

For those with kids, it isn't a bad little game to get them to do a bit of maths, And for those big kids, come and have a go if you think you're clever enough.

The Blog Editor can do a sub 8 second time on basic addition and a sub 20 second time on advanced multiplication (and that is with 13x14 thrown in).

Web 2.0 Teams

2008-08-31T22:47:00.003+01:00

One of the big buzz words about the world wide web currently is Web 2.0.

In simple terms this is about the recent changing trends on the internet. The internet used to be a place to market your company - a brochure on the web. It is now a place where a community can be created, content and functionality can be pulled from other websites and your content can be made available to other sources.

We'd like to think that Web Teams has always been a bit of a Web 2.0 type of a website.

1. No HTML skills, no problem
Web Teams would have nothing if it wasn't for the team sites. These are created by you.

For our part, we have produced the template site design and the code behind to allow you to enter your match reports and news items. This gives you a great looking football website without having to be a HTML genius.

But it's the power of the community of people who use and visit Web Teams that makes the site what it is. Since 1999, over 10,000 team sites have been created - we're very proud of this fact.

2. Sharing video content
You can now upload videos from your mobile phones to YouTube. You can embed these videos in your match reports and news items. You want to show your star striker scoring the winning penalty on the Saturday afternoon? Get your mobile phone or camera out, video it and have it up on your Web Teams site by Saturday night.

3. Your latest content wherever you want it
Our previous blog post Go Go Web Teams Gadget explained how you can get the latest news from your site on your Windows Vista Desktop or your Google Homepage.

4. Share any content on Facebook
One or two of you may have heard of a little website called Facebook that's doing quite well in the UK?

Well, you can click on a news item or match report or player page within Web Teams to post that content to your Facebook profile. Your Facebook friends can then get this information and comment on this.

Go Go Web Teams Gadget!

2008-08-18T23:28:00.004+01:00

One Web Teams feature that visitors to your site may not be aware of is the Web Teams Gadget.

This feeds live news from your site to either your Windows Vista Desktop or your Google homepage.

The screenshot below shows the gadget working on Windows Vista. Click here to find out more about the Windows Vista Gadget

The screenshot below shows the gadget working on your Google homepage. Click here to find out more about the Google Gadget

The Football Season Starts Here

2008-08-07T22:46:00.004+01:00

This weekend marks pretty much the start of the football season in the UK with the Charity Shield, the start of the main football leagues in England and Scotland.

At Web Teams we're going to stick our neck on the line in this blog post and predict the winners of each of the main leagues. If you think you can do better - then please add a comment to this post and we'll check in 9 or 10 months to see if anyone got their predictions correct.

English Premiership: Arsenal
English Championship: QPR
English 1st: Leeds
English 2nd: Darlington
Scottish Premier: Celtic

Web Team is going stronger than ever - so thanks to everyone for continuing to use the service. We've never had so many sites running at this stage of the year. This Blog is also getting a large number of hits, around 300 people a day read it - but please add your comments and make it more of a community (add comments link below this post).

We leave you with two YouTube videos:

1. English Premiership Goals of the Season 07/08

...and for those that don't like Ronaldo back heels and want to see "proper football" on "proper pitches", here are some great goals from the 1970's...

2. English Goals of the Season 1972-1982

Attract more Visitors to your Site

2008-07-31T22:35:00.000+01:00

Some weeks ago we posted a post on what team sites got the most visitors (read article).

Here are five quick tips how to maximise the traffic to your Web Teams site.

1. Get higher up the Google search results
To get higher up the search results in Google you should do two simple things A. update your site regularly and B. Get as many other sites to link to yours.

2. Add your web address to the bottom of your emails
If you write an email, use an email signature at the bottom such as

Regards,

Joe Bloggs
Fulchester United
www.webteams.co.uk/fulchesterunited

3. Mention the site in your match programme
Put the web address on the front of your programme. Maybe also have an advert in your programme for the site telling fans to check for the latest news.

4. Post regular news items
Visitors come back to a site again and again if they know there is good content on it. Get your team manager or chairman or captain to write a few words each week for the site and post these as a news item.

5. Tell others on the web about your site
There are loads of discussion forums and football blogs on the Internet. Post some articles on these forums telling others about your club. Also if you ever post any comments, remember to sign off with your web address as you would in an email signature.

Get a Club Page

2008-07-22T22:22:00.005+01:00

If your club has multiple Web Teams team sites then we can provide you with a club overview page for free.

This will be a single page that sits above your Web Teams team sites and feeds off the information within these and automatically updates.

The best way to show this feature off is with screenshots and example club sites:

Fig 1. Credit Suisse site above for their first and second team.

Other club sites you may want to browse include:

Bridport FC's page for the first, reserve and third team.

Poulton Victoria's page for the first and second team.

Withymoor Colt's page for the ten of their youth teams from unders 9's to under 17 girls.

If you would like an overview page for your club then send an email to info@webteams.co.uk. This is a free feature for all clubs that have three or more paid for Web Teams team sites.

How to Archive your Site

2008-07-16T22:40:00.003+01:00

We've had a few emails coming in over the last few weeks querying how to archive a Web Teams site so it is ready for the new season.

It's hopefully quite easy - but here's a few screenshots below that should help...

1. Click the Archive Site option within your site admin area

2. Click to confirm

This then does a few things:

Your previous season's site is archived

You must return to the team entry page and set up your site for the new season

Once your new site is set up - links to the old site(s) will be automatically added

Previous season's data is also used on player stats pages

If you want to know more about the archive process please check out our help page on this:
- http://www.webteams.co.uk/Help017.aspx

See the Bigger Picture

2008-07-06T20:06:00.006+01:00

A couple of small enhancements to tell folks about:

1. How to quickly see a bigger picture of the main team picture

Web Teams sites have a 300 pixel wide team picture at the top (see Fig 1.1 below). This allows us to show your news items and match report headlines near to the top of the page. However, if you quickly want to see a bigger version of a site's team picture. Just click on the image and a 600 pixel wide picture will be shown (see Fig 1.2 below).

Fig 1.1 Small picture

Fig 1.2 Big picture

2. Slightly bigger player pictures

The size of the player pictures you upload will now be 100 pixels wide, a little bigger than the 80 pixels it has previously been. This is now possible due to our wider site size compared with last year - so we have a little more room to squash bigger pictures on the squad page.

Fig 2. The blog editor as a three year old!!!

Post your videos on Web Teams!

2008-06-29T19:01:00.005+01:00

At Web Teams our thinking has always been to concentrate on providing great football related functionality. Where another company does something really well for example Google with their graphs, or Facebook with their posted links, we look to utilise their technology.

The clear leader on the web for videos is obviously YouTube.com. And YouTube.com allow you to embed their videos on any site.

At Web Teams we have now allowed you to embed YouTube.com videos on your site.

To add a video to your site you must first post it on YouTube.com.

A simple way of doing this is to video a bit of your match on your digital camera. Then use Windows Media Maker to make it into a WMV file. Then logon to YouTube.com and upload it to the web.

Once your video is live, you need to get the unique id from the YouTube URL. The screenshot below shows this. Note that the characters before the id are v=

Add this unique Id to your Web Teams news item. Click preview to check it is OK.

Your video is displayed on your Web Teams site!

Why not upload some of your videos from your games and then post a comment on this blog post so others can view them?

How many visitors?

2008-06-24T21:40:00.009+01:00

Now that it is pretty much the end of the 2007/08 football season, it is with interest we look at our visitor statistics...

The team that attracted the most visitors to their home page was Boreham Wood from the Ryman Premier League. Their home page alone received over 48,000 unique visitors!

To put this into perspective. Only four Premiership stadiums could sit this many people (Old Trafford, The Emirate Stadium, St James, Stadium of Light). If this many people tried to fit into the City of Manchester Stadium there would be over 200 left over standing in the car park.

Boreham Wood also had the most hits for a match report (Boreham Wood 1 AFC Wimbledon 0 - 800 unique) and for a player (their top scorer Simon Thomas - 1,200 unique).

But other sites were most popular in other areas.

Redhill FC from the Sussex County League posted nearly 360 news items! This attracted over 15,000 unique visitors who read their news.

Over 2,000 unique visitors browsed the excellent photographs displayed on Romulus FC's website.

The fun fantasy stats where most popular on lower league team sites. 2,000 unique visitors flocked to see who had the most fantasy points on Shadforth Plough's website from the Durham Sunday League (4th division).

Across all of our team sites a combined total of nearly one million unique visitors visited Web Teams. Our web community continues to grow every year - please continue to tell others about us and we look forward to the 2008/09 season!

Most frequently asked Frequently Asked Questions

2008-06-18T20:27:00.007+01:00

At Web Teams we pride ourselves on having a pretty good frequently asked questions help area. This saves time in people emailing us a question and waiting for an answer on something that's been asked many times before.

This help area can be found at:
http://www.webteams.co.uk/Help.aspx

...and what are our most frequently asked Frequently Asked Questions? Our visitor stats show the following interesting results:

1. What do I get for my £15.00?
This help page was viewed over 1,600 last season! In short the answers include (1) The best football stats for your team presented in the most professional way, (2) Absolutely NO adverts anywhere on your site, (3) End of season archive and the use of stats from previous season... [read full article]

2. What format must my pictures be in?
This is becoming a more common question now that digital cameras produce such large images. The image quality you need for a website is MUCH lower than if you wanted to print out a 10x8" quality photo. So before you upload a picture to the web it is best to resize it down a little... [read full article]

3. Can I add a discussion board to my site?
Web Teams has always had a strategy of concentrating on doing football related things perfectly (league tables, goal stats, team progress, player stats etc...) and leaving more generic things (lots of photos, discussion boards, visitor polls, online videos) to the multi-billion dollar sites that are huge. Our recommendation here is to set up a Facebook Group for your team in parallel to your Web Teams site. This is perfect for banter and daft photos and things and compliments your professional looking Web Teams football site. A more full blog post on this subject will be posted in the near future... [read full article]

4. I have just signed up, how can I edit my site?
Simple getting started question that most reading this blog already know the answer to... [read full article]

5. What happens to my site at the end of the season?
Web Teams offers the much valued archive feature, where a snapshot of your old site is stored at a new URL and the stats from these previous sites are used on your site for the new football season. [read full article]

We do have one or two emails this time of year about people wanting to change URLS we answered this question in the blog post below:
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/06/get-proper-domain-name.html

6. How do I get a proper domain name?
Related to the point above. [read full article/ read blog post]

7. A player has left my team, can I delete him from my site?
Yes, at the end of the season. During the season, you should mark against them that they have left the club. In their player details area you should say why they have left the club. This way all of the player statistics stay intact. [read full article]

Please email in any suggestions for future blog posts.

stephen@webteams.co.uk

Web Teams - Out of Office

2008-06-07T18:07:00.006+01:00

From 8th June to 16th June there will be minimal email support from Web Teams. Coincidently both lads who run the service will be on holiday, and although I'll check in to make sure things are running fine on occasions, I'll not be doing much on email.

The most common enquiry currently is from those archiving who have teams whose names have changed. For example from webteams.co.uk/thequeenshead to webteams.co.uk/theblackbull - our advice here is to either:

1. Archive as normal, change your team name but buy a proper domain name:
http://webteams.blogspot.com/2008/06/get-proper-domain-name.html
or
2. Sign up for a new site and forget the old one

All other queries are pretty much always answered in our frequently asked questions area:
http://www.webteams.co.uk/Help.aspx

Thanks very much - enjoy Euro 2008 even though it's not the same without any of the home nations in it. Top 10 Euro Championship goals below. Add a comment to say which goal you think is the best (although it has to be Gazza or Van Basten really).

Get a Top Level Domain Name

2008-06-02T21:40:00.008+01:00

Have you ever wanted a nice short and snappy domain name for your Web Teams site?

If your club is called Fulchester Town FC - then you could have the URL www.fulchestertownfc.co.uk and receive emails to manager@fulchestertownfc.co.uk

Three or four years ago, Web Teams used to offer this service. But we stopped doing it as you can get it so cheap elsewhere.

Two of the biggest hosting companies in the UK are www.fasthosts.co.uk and uk2.net.

With either of these companies you can get your proper domain name and access to a control panel for less than £10 a year.

A screenshot from each is below.

UK2

Fast Hosts

Note: This option is particularly useful if you originally signed up for your Web Teams site as webteams.co.uk/fulchesteru7s as an under 7s teams and are now an under 11s team - you could get the domain www.fulchesteryouth.co.uk and mask the Web Teams URL beneath this.

Disclaimer: Web Teams is not affiliated in any way with either www.fasthosts.co.uk or uk2.net, all support on web forwarding and domain names can be found on the site of the web hosting company you choose.

Web Teams International

2008-05-27T22:33:00.004+01:00

Most Web Teams sites are for teams based in the UK. But we do now have a growing number of international sites.

A selection of one or two sites showing football teams around the world using the Web Teams service are below.

Lobster Pot FC - Bermuda

http://www.webteams.co.uk/lobsterpotfc

TuS Germania Schnelsen III - Germany

http://www.webteams.co.uk/tusgermaniaschnelsen3

UPS Allstars FC - United Arab Emirates

http://www.webteams.co.uk/timeoutfc

Mission Valley United - USA

http://www.webteams.co.uk/mvunited

A brief history of Web Teams

2008-05-20T20:45:00.006+01:00

Web Teams was all started in 1999 after two lads who had both been doing websites for football teams they had played for ended up working together. Both were football mad. Both loved the idea of posting stats and news items up on the Internet.

The idea of an easy to use online service that was available to all followed shortly with the purchase of the domain name web-teams.co.uk.

The oldest record of any site we have is with the Durham City Ladies FC team from 2000. See picture below:

Note the changes between the 2000 site design and the site from the 2008 season in the picture below:

We estimate that easily more than 10,000 teams have used Web Teams for their website since 1999. Please browse through some of our archived sites below and see how the Web Teams service has steadily developed based on your feedback.

Northern League 1st Division 02/03 - Brandon United FC
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2003/brandonunitedfc

Sussex County League 2nd Division 03/04 - Wick FC
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2004/wickfc

Ryman League 1st Division 04/05 - AFC Wimbledon
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2005/afcwimbledon

Midland Football Alliance 05/06 - Tipton Town FC
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2006/tiptontownfc

Western League Premier Division 06/07 - Hallen AFC
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2007/hallenafc

Ryman League Premier Division 07/08 - Boreham Wood FC
http://www.webteams.co.uk/_2008/borehamwoodfc

Top 10 Tips for Web Teams Webmasters

2008-05-14T22:55:00.010+01:00

1. Include a team photo on your site

Upload a team photo to your site. This will be displayed on your homepage and also on your squad page. Clicking on the picture on the squad page will give a larger view of the image.

Additional tip: Before uploading your team picture use a graphics package like Irfan View to crop the image so your team fills the available space. If you resize the picture to 600 pixels wide then it will upload faster and there will be no reduction in quality.

2. Add a news item each week

Visitors will continue to come back to your site if you regularly update it. If you have a match on a Saturday then try and pop a news item up mid-week. If your chairman or manager normally writes a few notes for a programme, then maybe add some quotes from this in the weekly news item.

Additional tip: The news items page will load more slowly the more news items you have. If you add more than one news item a week then it may be an idea to delete selected news items when they no longer become relevant.

3. Write a match report for each result

Add a match report when you fill in the results details after one of your team's matches. Leave a double return between paragraphs to make the match report more readable.

Additional tip: To save time you may wish to write the match report in Word or in an email to yourself and spellcheck it first. Remember that your login session will time-out after around 30 minutes in the site admin area. So if you're a slow typer, prepare the match report and then copy and paste it into the text area.

4. Add individual player photographs

Each player has their own page within a Web Teams site. This page lists their details added by you and also those generated automatically from the match report data. Adding a player picture really does make these pages look fantastic. It is recommended that these photo's should be in portrait form (not landscape). Adding a detailed or humourous few lines of text for the player's details also helps finish off this page.

Additional tip: Maybe the easiest way to do this is to take a team picture and then crop the player's heads down to individual pictures. Resize these photos down to 80 pixels wide before uploading to save time and retain the quality.

5. Associate news items with a player

If you have uploaded individual player photo's then you will be given the option to associate news items with a player. As with the individual player pages, this really enhances the news items page. Player photos already get automatically added to match reports and to your home page.

Additional tip: Try to mix the players up that get mentioned in the news items, this keeps the pictures fresh and will stop the news items page looking repetitive.

6. Edit your goal descriptions

Click the little pencil icon next to the automatically generated goal description to give a better report on how the goal was scored.

Additional tip: If you simply want to toggle through the automatically created Web Teams goal descriptions then click the toggle icon next to the pencil icon.

7. Fill in the rest of the results in your league

All leagues should have a secretary, if you can't find any results from the Internet or the press, get in touch with your league secretary and get them to send you the other results.

Additional tip: The league results are not just used on the league and league results page. The league results grid page is also a great resource, especially in the run in at the end of the season.

8. Tell others about your site

The more visitors, the more people reading about your team. The more links to your site on the Internet, the higher ranking it will get on search engines such as Google!

Additional tip: Start with getting other teams in your league to link to your site, then try and get your league site/discussion board/local paper to do a link. Finally, if you really feel like you have a good site, see if you can get a link on a site that attracts nationwide/international visitors.

9. Add a link to directions to your ground

You can enter your address and postcode in your site admin area and this automatically adds a link to Google Maps.

10. And finally, to give your site an even more professional feel, get a domain name

www.northshieldsfc.co.uk (for example) looks more professional and is more memorable than www.webteams.co.uk/northshieldsfc - Once you owned a domain you would then also be able to receive emails for an address such as secretary@northshieldsfc.co.uk. These details could then be used in match programmes and in press releases.

- Web Teams recommends www.fasthosts.co.uk for domain names

Additional tip: Try and choose a domain name that describes your club but is still short and memorable. Somebody else may already own the name you would want as a first choice, so have a few ideas ready.

2007/08 Customer Survey – Summary of results

2008-04-27T18:00:00.004+01:00

Last month almost 20% of you were good enough to take part in our customer survey. This is an amazing response rate and we'd like to think that the findings are a strong indication of what you think of our service. The top five things we learned from you are below. We have tried to improve on each of these aspects.

1. You really value the statistics Web Teams provides

Our question on how much you value the statistics got an average value of 9.6 out of 10.

This tells us that what you most love about Web Teams are the way we automatically generate your league table, your goal stats, your league stats, your player stats, your team progress etc. A number of you told us the goal stats pie charts looked fantastic. A few of you asked where the team progress line chart from last year had disappeared to.

In response to this we have brought back a new improved team progress chart to your site. You can see this on your Team Progress page.

2. You want to be able to display your club sponsors

Our open question of "if we could only do two things next year to improve the site, what should we do" came up with two clear responses. The first was that you wanted to be able to display your club sponsors.

We fully appreciate that clubs may want to thank and credit their sponsors. However, we think a website should be about your club and you shouldn't distract your visitor asking them to go elsewhere. We also have a problem with sponsors as we see this advertising and this is something we have tried very hard to stay clear of.

As a compromise we have decided that you can list your club sponsors, rather than show their logos, with links to their websites and with a brief description of what they offer. This information is subtly placed to the left of each page below your site links. If you really do want to show your sponsors' logos you can do this on your site pictures page or PhotoShop your team photo.

3. You want more pictures

The second suggested improvement was to be able to include more site pictures. We have now doubled your allocation from four pictures to eight.
Our advice remains that if you want to put a huge amount of pictures or video online then you should set up a website such as a Facebook Group to work in parallel with your Web Teams site and link to it.

4. You like having lots of space for your information

When we asked the open question what you liked best about the service, one of the common responses was that we allow lots of space for your information. Many of you have tried other services for your football sites and you strongly dislike your space being taken up by adverts.

We analysed our web logs and over 96% of all visitors have a screen resolution of over 1000px in width.

In response to this, we have made your website wider, the font size slightly bigger and tweaked the overall spacing to give your website a little more space to breathe. This change is also very much in line with big world leader websites such as http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/ have recently done with their sites.

5. You like us and would recommend us

When we asked whether you'd recommend us to a friend or colleague, over 95% gave this a likelihood of 8, 9 or 10.
This is fantastic news to us and explains why we continue to grow every year. We have decided to freeze our prices at £15 again for the third year running as we would like to see the Web Teams community grow even further. We do not run the Web Teams service to try and push it to make money.
We know a lot of the teams are youth and student teams, so we are again keeping this price for a whole season well below the price most of you would pay for a referee for a single game. Please help us to continue to grow and indeed recommend us to other teams you know that would like a website. Any recommendations by word of mouth, email or on Internet discussion forums are massively appreciated.

Harry Enfield - Mr Cholmondley-Warner (Association Football)

2008-04-01T22:21:00.002+01:00

Classic comedy from Harry Enfield about football in the old days:

Play Banana Football

2008-03-20T22:38:00.002Z

Some years ago Web Teams teamed up with the talented people at scribble.biz to bring you the world famous Banana Football game. Click on the picture or link below to play it!

Banana Football

Why use Web Teams for your website

2008-03-01T08:00:00.001Z

Here are the top five reasons why you should use the Web Teams service for your football team's website:

1. We offer great site statistics

You don't have to work out what the league tables is or who has the most assists in your team, you don't even have to know whether you score more goals from corners than open play. We calculate all of these details automatically as the season progresses.

You simply add your match details once a week and the rest is seamless and the resulting website you create is amazing.

2. We promise - no adverts!

We have listened very carefully to our users since 1999 about what they like and what they don't like. Time and time again we hear you don't want adverts spoiling your site - it detracts from the data you want your visitors to see and it stops them coming back.

Across Web Teams you'll see no adverts - that's our promise to you.

3. We keep your history online

Once you've entered data into your website for the season you don't want to have to delete this to start the next season. Every summer it is possible to archive your previous season's site before starting the following season.

In addition to this, the data from your previous seasons is integrated into your current website. This adds real strength and depth to your player data and produces a team history page with quick links to your seasons gone.

4. We're established and recommended

The Web Teams service has been being used for football websites since 1999. Since then we have grown to the point where teams from every age range and from every county in the UK use the service.

Over this time we've received amazing feedback from our customers and some pretty high critical acclaim. Amongst these include a super review from the BBC's technology program Click and nominations for the 2005 and 2006 and 2007.Net Magazine Website of Year Awards.
- Further information (Customer comments / watch BBC feature)

5. You'll be joining an online football community

A Web Teams site is part of the whole Web Teams community. As you enter news items and match reports your site will gain prominence to the wider world as these are published on our homepage, latest news page and RSS feeds.
Should you be an eleven a side team, your player statistics will be compiled into our Web Teams Fantasy Football league. Can players from your team be in the top ten Web Teams players each week or even at the end of the season?

Welcome to the Web Teams Blog

2008-02-14T07:00:00.001Z

At Web Teams it's important that our users feel part of the community. Since we started in 1999 we have tried to be more than just a place where you create a website fo you own football team.

The football online community aspects of Web Teams include:

Fantasy Football - A bit of fun which compares each team in Web Teams to find the best players

Sites Updated Today - A list of all match reports and news items added each day

Search - The ability to search Web Teams to find other teams

Gadgets - You can take your Web Teams news items and post them on your Google page or Windows Vista desktop

Which brings us to this the new Web Teams Blog.

This will be a place where we post news items about Web Teams, tips on how to make your site better and also just some fun football stuff!

Please help make this part of the Web Teams football community by commenting on the posts. Comments can be left by anyone and once approved they will go online for all to see!

If you have a Web Teams site, why not leave the web address of your site so that others can see who you are?