Awareness Test

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

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

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

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.

Your Pictures On The Homepage

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

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?

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

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

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

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:

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