A Picture Says A Thousand Words

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.

Do People Like Your Site?

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

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

The Front Page News Ticker

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

Web Teams looking great on your Mobile

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...

Stand Out Fixture

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:

Improvements to your Home Page

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.

Google Map on your Site

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

Give your Club Staff a home on Web Teams

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

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.

Fantasy Stats - You either love them or hate them

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...

Small Tweaks to the Match Report Page

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?

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.

Web Teams on your Mobile Phone

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:

A Permanent Fixture?

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

Go Go Web Teams Gadget!

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

See the Bigger Picture

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!

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?