What new changes are happening for 2010?
The basic functionality will remain the same. Some pages will look a little different. The update functions are being streamlined. The reason for the change is that the structure of the original database was making some aspects of the site difficult to maintain. In changing the database structure, significant changes had to be made to the coding. Those changes have taken alot of time, and in fact they are not complete. But the necessary stuff is there, and it is important to get the changes online and being used in order for it to be put through its paces. This effort actually started in the 2008-09 off-season and implementation was put on hold for the 2009 season. If they aren't made now they never will be.
One of the key changes is a more robust user registration process. Registered users can and must now speficiy their own password, and can change it. Users can also specify which account(s) they want to view in their session. In the past, the preferred accounts were specified on the URL. That functionality is still there of course for unregistered users, but the ability to specify the accounts yourself is more flexible.
To register (and even existing registered users must re-register), click on the Register link at the left and go through the process. Then use the Login link to log in, and the click on Settings to specify which account(s) you wish to view by default in the Secondary Accounts listbox. For most users, Primary Account is irrelevant, but it must be specified. Just pick whichever one of the Secondary Accounts you are most closely associated with.
How do I get my league set up on The Footy Record?
Send an email to the administrator (see next question) with the following details: Your name and that of your league, and initially a list of your teams and the grounds they play on.
Where do I send any questions I might have?
Send an email to the administrator at contact1 (at) thefootyrecord.net.
How do I get players' photos on to the site?
These must be emailed to the administrator. Photos of players must be .jpg files 120 pixels wide and 150 pixels high - you should be able to compress these to about 4-5 kb without losing too much quality. They must also be called por?????.jpg where ????? is a right-justified, zero padded numerical representation of the player's id. A player's id can be found at the top of his player profile page in grey, following the words PLAYER PROFILE. See this example. Mick Sitch's id is 15, so his photo must be called por00015.jpg.
What about team and league logos?
These must also be emailed to the administrator. Logos must be .gif files 96 pixels wide and 96 pixels high - you should be able to compress these to about 4-5 kb without losing too much quality. They can be called anything.
What about photos of grounds for the Grounds page?
These must also be emailed to the administrator. Ground photos must be .jpg files 320 pixels wide and 240 pixels high. They can be called anything.
Status of matches: What is meant by OPEN/CLOSED and CONFIRMED/UNCONFIRMED?
When a match is defined in the fixture, it is defined as OPEN or CLOSED by checking the OPEN checkbox. The difference is that an open match can be editted while a closed one can not. Account administrators can use this flag to identify whether other Footy Record users in his account may or may not edit the scores of the match.
The other reason why it can be useful to close a match is so that it doesn't clutter up the menu of "Matches You May Update". There is no point in having matches there once they have been completed and all their scores have been entered.
Also, OPEN matches are marked on the match page as Unconfirmed while CLOSED matches are Confirmed.
What Google mapping functionality is available and how do I exploit it?
On the page where you define the attributes of a ground, you will find a field called "Google Map Parms". If you don't want this particular ground to be mapped, leave it blank. If you do want it mapped, you need to enter its latitude and longitude. For more details on the format of this field, see the help item for it.
By simply specifying these co-ordinates, a Google map showing the ground's location will appear on the ground's page. As an example, you can see the location of the ground in Farum, Denmark, by clicking here (scroll down to see the map).
In addition to this, these ground co-ordinates can be used to show a map of all the teams in your league. All you need to do is supply the administrator of this site with an icon bitmap to be used for each team. This bitmap MUST be a .gif file, 17 pixels by 17 pixels, with the one pixel width on the outside - all the way around - set to transparent. The remaining 15 x 15 pixel square in the middle of the bitmap should be a graphic of the team's jumper.
The presence of the bitmap and the co-ordinates in the ground definition of the team's default ground, will cause that team to appear on the map. The map can be viewed by clicking on the Club Map menu option on the left of the browser.
For an example of what this looks like, you can see the a map of the DAFL teams here.