Exclusive offers for your leagues, clubs and associations

Hi all,

A quick heads up to inform you that this coming Monday, 31 January 2011, Sportzware Membership and SportingPulse Website administrators will notice some slight changes in their database and websites - namely the addition of exclusive club offers.

They are designed to provide users with offers that will benefit your organisation (leagues, clubs, associations), and will feature in the following two positions:

1. Sportzware Membership: A new Club Offers menu will be visible within in the left-hand menu/column of your database.

2. SportingPulse Websites: A new Club Offers banner will be visible at the top of the Site Administration Control Panel.

Customise your site in fewer clicks

Howdy all,

Just a quick post today to let you know of a slight change we’ve made to the ‘Customise Your Website’ area of your SportingPulse website back-end.

We’ve cut out the middle step in this section so that you no longer need to click ‘Simple’ or ‘Advanced’ Customisation before then having to click into a third level of options. Instead, we’ve put the three Advanced items (Colours and Fonts, Page Headers and Other Configuration) straight into the main section.

Previously, the ‘Simple’ option allowed users to choose a theme for their site. Don’t worry, this is still available, however it is now accessible from within the Colours and Fonts area. We think this makes more sense given that a Theme selection only changes the colours of your site and nothing else.

We trust this subtle change will be well received – it should cut down the number of clicks required to customise your site, which we think can only be a positive J

Sorting your photo galleries made easy!

Our first phase of SportingPulse network website upgrades attracted a fantastic response from many of our users with feedback around the new colours and layout, as well as suggestions for other incremental changes to further enhance the user experience of website editors on the sites.

One such suggestion was based around the ability to sort photo galleries, and we’re pleased to announce that this process will be dramatically simplified as part of the second phase of upgrades later in January.

The improvements will include the following:

A ‘Public’ checkbox on the main Media Library page

The ‘Public’ checkbox currently exists in the Edit section of an individual gallery within the Media Library, and the reason for changing this is because we wanted to give people an easier way of selecting which galleries will appear on your website, without needing to go in and edit each gallery individually.

And don’t forget that the Media Library can be used as a store for ALL your online documents – i.e. not just your photos, but also Word and Excel Documents, PDF files etc. - so to ensure that only photo gallery albums appear on your site’s Photo Gallery page, you’d simply make those particular albums ‘Public’ and leave any other albums unchecked.

The ability to drag and sort your Albums

The only way to currently control the order in which your photo gallery albums appear on your website is to edit each individual album and manually adjust the sort order. Confusing? Probably. Time consuming? Yes.

This change will mean that you’ll be able to literally use your mouse to drag each gallery up and down the list in order to sort them into the order your want them to appear on the website.

So, albums appearing at the top of the list will appear at the top of the list on your website’s Photo Gallery page – simple, right? We think so too…

On top of these enhancements, we'll also be introducing a new Photo Gallery widget to sit in the right-hand column of your website and display your latest pics - watch this space for more news and other exciting developments coming your way very soon!!

As always, please feel free to comment on this blog post below or through our other communication channels such as our Facebook and Twitter pages, or you can always Contact Us for more info. We welcome the feedback…

Personalise your club’s domain name - FREE!

We know - SportingPulse URL's are impossible to write out for someone.  Its a long story, but its to do with your website as part of a large network and how we integrate the complex ladders and stats into its structure.

At some stage I bet you’ve thought, “I wish this URL had my club’s name incorporated into it” or “I wish it could be shorter so I can promote it to our members more easily”.

For example, your website, much like the Geelong and District Football League’s website URL, might look something like this: http://www.sportingpulse.com/assoc_page.cgi?c=1-6162-0-0-0&sID=89315.

Just imagine if it could be promoted using www.gdfl.sportingpulse.net instead.

Well, your prayers have been answered!! We’re pleased to be able to offer this functionality in the next phase of our network website upgrades that will be released on February 9th. And best of all, it’s completely FREE!

When the changes do get implemented (and don’t worry, we’ll notify you know once this has occurred!), here is some good info to help you on your way…

Assigning a domain name to your site

Once logged in as a website editor into the Site Administration Control Panel (i.e. the “back-end”) of your website, there will be a new icon called “Assign a Domain Name”.

The Assign a Domain Name screen will allow editors to select a domain they would like to use (subject to availability) in order to customise it for your own association or club, and assign that domain to the site – it’s that simple!

What domains will be available?

At this stage you’ll be able to assign a domain name with the .sportingpulse.net extension, where you’ll be able to select the prefix (e.g. gdfl from the example above) for your domain.

Note: Some sports already offer their own sport-specific domain names – e.g. leaguenet.com.au (RubgyLeague), ridenet.com.au (Motorcycling) etc. We encourage you to contact your sport’s governing body to find out more information about any such domains that may be available.

Want to use your own domain name?

Of course, clubs, leagues and associations are still able to purchase and register their own domain names (e.g. www.vfl.com.au) and point these domain names to their SportingPulse site.

Domain names are relatively inexpensive, typically costing less than $50 per year, and can be purchased from many companies on the internet. We recommend using Netregistry, who offer several types of domain names including those ending in .com, .com.au, org.au, .net.au and lots more.

If you do elect to purchase your own domain name, you will need to redirect this domain name to your SportingPulse site - simply follow these instructions from the SportingPulse SupportWiki for how this can be undertaken.

We look forward to the release of this new functionality, as well as the other upgrades scheduled to be released later this month, and we hope many associations, leagues and clubs will see value in this.

As always, please feel free to comment on this blog post below or through our other communication channels such as our Facebook and Twitter pages, or you can always Contact Us for more info. We welcome the feedback…

More website changes on the way!

Following on from our first phase of changes to our SportingPulse network websites, we’re excited to let you know that a second wave of upgrades is set to be launched at the end of January.

While the first phase was mainly about improving the website experience for users of these websites (i.e. layout, content and colours), the second phase revolves around making things more user-friendly and efficient friendly for website administrators.

Some of the changes you will see include:

- New right-hand column widgets:

• Major Sponsor Widget to sit above island advertisement.
• Social Media Widget connecting your club’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
• Photo Gallery Widget featuring the latest photos uploaded to your site.

- A new Site Admin Checklist to keep you informed on the status of your site, and what information you still need to update.

- Domain Name assignment – the ability to automatically assign a sportingpulse.net subdomain to your site (e.g. yourclubname.sportingpulse.net)

We’ll keep you updated about these changes through this blog, and as usual if you have any feedback, please feel free to post a reply below or contact us at websites@sportingpulse.com.

More sports launch smarter websites

Several national, state and regional sporting organisations have recently launched new Smarterweb websites, taking advantage of SportingPulse’s high-end premium web site product.

Smarterwebs provide a professional and functional website that promotes your business and its image, with a user-friendly content management system that allows your site to remain fresh and current.

December was a particularly busy month for us with five Smarterwebs either launched as new or revamped sites:

· AFL Victoria

· Volleyball Victoria

· Basketball Victoria Country

· Australian Water Polo

· Motorcycling Western Australia

The NBL and WNBL websites were both revamped considerably in 2010, while the AFL Community Club website was launched in the middle of last year with great results.

Some other popular sites also launched throughout 2010 included Bowls NZ, AFL NSW/ACT, Ballarat FL, Basketball ACT, SEABL and BigV.

Smarterweb sites are fully customisable - they are built by our graphic design and development team in conjunction with you - and give administrators control of popular features such as Latest News, Voting Polls, Photo Galleries, Forums and much more.

There are lots more sports with Smarterweb sites in the pipeline to be launched in 2011, and we very much look forward to helping them get off the ground!

If your club, association or sport governing body wants to find out more about these sites, please click here to find out more information about SportingPulse Smarterweb websites.