Web Name
maur...@msn.com
more marketable/fun.
The webname for our team site is complex. On the website manager the
url line suggests we can apply a __team name___.teamsonline.info
address, but the link that I need to give to users, families, friends
is still a long string w/ no recognizeable name for the team. Can the
link/site http address be simplified or shortened ?
Couple of things as you update to 2007.
1) Parents love it initially...but it's usefulness at $50 per
subscription as a photo page is limited. Most leagues have their own
websites these days. Anyone can freeware a photo /card/team publishing
software. Even publishing w/ web site software is cheaper if someone
wants to work at it. So I bought yours because......? Who has time
to look around and/or do the design work? The issue is there's no
interactivity with Season Planner beyond the coach. Some suggestions:
a) Give each site some blog space or comment page. In the age of
MySpace
where parents cringe at where/how their kids are spending time
online, let them
use Season Planner to talk about their team. Give the sites a
place to
participate beyond being a bulletin board/picture post.
b) Stats. Hate to admit it, but I bought the $50 license to
Season Planner before
really researching what was in it. I started to have fun w/
the pics, etc, but then
realized too late that its lacking what I was looking for in
the first place. A
place to enter data that calculates statistics. Now I have
to find another
software that does this. How could you add a feature ?
I really think you have a great product here, but as a coach....I know
that expenses of managing rec teams is high and we're already out of
pocket a lot of money. Parents don't look around for things like
this...we do. Season Planner can be a great motivator/kudos board as
is. Help coaches sell it to parents as a place that interactively
involves the team and builds comraderie. Also...I have 12 parents that
I've notified of the location, but I swear only 5-6 have looked at it.
It's been a lot of work and not sure if worth the effort.....all
because I can't give them a simple www. __Myteam_. teamsonline.info.
You woldn't believe how feeble people still are at not being able to
understand links, pasting, creating homepages, icons on their desktops,
etc. I'll be real disappointed if halfway through the season, they
aren't going to the Season Planner site regularly and it will become
not worth my time. I actually coach two teams and am Board member in
our league. These things build by word of mouth.
Ken Barley
can enter a single word like (myteam, tigers, etc). After you publish
your site your users can access the site with
http://tigers.teamsonline.info. Notice no www in front. It is very
simple. My wife is a boys golf coach and here prefixes for each season
is millergolf04, millergolf05, millergolf06 for the different years.
2. We want SeasonPlanner - 2004 to be very easy and quick to use. We
want it to be a site that can be maintained very quickly be a coach or
a team parent. I think it is much more than a team picture site. It is
more like a news site. Articles, pictures, results, and links are all
valuable. If people want to do their own thing and build their own
website and have the knowledge they can do that. If people want a
cheaper solution, with all the Ads and other info not related to their
team they can go that route.
3. Stats are something we have considered and will look at in a future
site. We do allow some of our users to upload stat pages to our site
and others simply build a link on the links page.
4. The sites get visited a ton as long as they update them. Once a few
kids and parents start looking at the site the others will also. It is
amazing how many parents and kids made the site their home page. So
many that we are going to offer an optional google search box on the
right side of the sites. Then parents can make google searches from
their season site. This will be totally optional for each license.
5. We have a great deal for leagues and schools.
6. A message board and ability to reply or comment on an article (blog
style) is an interesting idea. The problem is how to make it family
friendly and free of trash talk. Also, the work to moderate comments
could be time consuming to the coach. Be curious what people think
about this but I tend to think it isn't a good addition.
7. We are going to have a new SeasonPlanner - 2007 version. I really
enjoy hearing what people would like to see. The two main things I want
to get into a new release are a new template for the sites so coaches
can select the current template or a new one, site controlled sponsor
ads so you can sell ads and get sponsors for your site and they are
displayed on your site at your control. Then this $50 product can make
money for the teams.
Bradley Miller
impressions of the program as they relate to this thread.
I appreciate each of the points Mauro has made and have suggested
adding statistical capacities myself in years past. I think Ken has it
just right, though, and has explained himself well in his earlier post.
I began using team sites with the SeasonPlanner package and found it
to be perfect for a 8-and-Under baseball team. I have adapted its use
for 12-U league and travelling teams. To accomodate the desire some
have had for statistical information, I have used a statistical
baseball program to generate and track this information, exported it as
an HTML document (this is a standard feature of these programs) and
simply put a link to the page in the Links section of the SeasonPlanner
site.
Personally, I think this is the best solution, as I have used several
different statistical packages depending on what I wanted to track, and
in even these dedicated products I have never found the perfect package
for all teams' needs. By using these at my discretion and then linking
to them, I can generate and manipulate the statistics to my heart's
content while still having the simple and dependable SeasonPlanner
program. If SeasonPlanner ever adds an intrinsic statistical
management capability, I predict that only a narrow subset of users
will find it absolutely perfect for their team needs; for most, it will
be either too much or too little (and take too much time, in direct
proportion to the amount of information tracked). It will also add a
serious layer of difficulty to the program, one that I would not have
welcomed when I was starting out.
My current team site has been visited 2,463 times since it was set up
this season. My parents are no more or less sophisticated than anyone
else's, and two sets of parents do not even own a computer. I spent 15
minutes last Saturday talking one of them (over the phone) through
elementary navigation of the web, as he was at his father's house (my
player's grandfather) and wished to at least show them the site.
Regarding SeasonPlanner, build it and they will come....
As a closing thought, I also coach two teams and put a lot of time into
them. There are plenty of out-of-pocket expenses. For each coaching
parent, this is a labor of love, and it's pretty cheap as hobbies go
(try collecting rare coins...). I have found that the SeasonPlanner
site has been worthwhile in ways I never would have imagined. For
example, many of the players' grandparents who live in other states
follow the game summaries very closely as a way of staying current with
their grandson. The father of one of my players (also, BTW, my best
assistant coach) was transferred to Alaska from Virginia last fall, and
has used the site as his lifeline to his son's passion. The boy's
mother takes the team pictures during the games for the sole purpose of
posting them as attachments to the game and practice articles.
I have been told that the biggest beneficiary of these sites will be
me. As my boys progress either upward or outward, these seasons will
pass into the mist. By having access to the sites as archived
material, I can revisit every day and every event of every
SeasonPlanner season. Whatever effort I put in now is what will be
there for me later. I have looked back a few times with the sites of
the last couple of years, and it has been very rewarding. I can only
imagine what it will be like 10 or 20 years from now.
Brad