Mystify Soccer - Site improvements

Site improvements

Along with the new design, there have been slight changes to the web site. None of these are too major and have no effect on the actual management of teams. I think I have remembered them all and they are as follows:

Site access: The way that managers sign in to manage their team has been altered. Instead of clicking the flag of the country where the team resides and then selecting the team, all that is required now is an e-mail address (along with the password of course). The sign in option will appear at the top of every page. It will also appear if you click on a menu option that only managers can access.

Forgotten password: I have included an option for managers to have their password e-mailed to them, should they forget it. This easily improves the old system where they had to e-mail me.

Applications: The way that managers apply to join the game has been modified so that they can select which team(s) they would like to manage. The previous system was for an applicant to either select one team or all. I'm hoping the new system will enable people to get teams they actually want to manage a bit more. Unfortunately, most people want to manage a team that they have at least heard of (which is understandable) but there can only be one of each team in the game, and I have no answer to this one. Hopefully applicants will be quite happy managing the lesser teams as well - it makes no difference to how good the team is in the game anyway!

New manager data: The game now stores a managers' residence as well as their nationality. This data is used, and always has been used, for me to monitor the types of people playing the game and to get an idea if any players have Internet access difficulties (some countries use Internet café's a lot for example). The residence can be changed by the manager (as people can move of course) but the nationality is static from application onwards. In order to implement this, I have used the residence data for both. If this data is invalid for you, please let me know and I will correct it.

Absences: Absence dates can now be entered within the account details. Please use this when you are going to be unable to manage your team for a certain period of time. It means that your team won't be made available for new management during the period entered.

Team selection: The team selection page has been changed so that the 11 players and captain are now selected at once, rather than the previous system of selecting the players and then the captain on separate pages. Again, this doesn't affect game play - it's supposed to make it easier for managers.

Chat room: I'm not quite sure if this will work so let me know of any problems you have using it. If it doesn't work, then I'll probably scrap the thing. Previously I used a third party company to have a chat room but as it was third party and I wasn't paying for it, it was a bit rubbish! So I have decided to try and build my own that integrates with a site a bit better. It's purely two pages within the page - One that refreshes every three seconds with the latest text chat and another that is used to send a message. Give me your feedback on it. The advantages should be obvious, as you don't need to log in for it to know who you are and it doesn't open up any other browser windows. Plus you don't need java to be installed.

News articles: If you are reading this then you are in the 'news articles' part of the site. I intend to use this to post game information. This could be anything from things you need to be aware of to game improvements - including letting you know of prospective updates. I will also use this, from time to time, to mention interesting situations within the game involving certain teams - so this could be quite a lot when seasons are due to end! If I get time I may even do a weekly review.

League status data: I have merged 'tables', 'results' and 'fixtures' into one section of the web site. I have also made the links between the pages smoother. Now, if you are in a certain division you stay within that division when you go between the 3 areas. Previously you could change divisions within each area but when you went to view another area, you defaulted back to the division your team was in. League data should now be easier to navigate around. I've also made it so that previous results for the season can be viewed per week. The structured cross-table of results will only be available once the season has ended and that will be in the archive (mentioned below).

Right panel: There is now a right panel on certain pages within the site (the ones where the data for the page doesn't take up too much room) and this is just to give managers a quick summary of their team, along with a few quick links to certain pages within the site.

That's it (I think) for the changes that have been implemented for now. I'm hopeful that you will agree they are all worthwhile. There is information I want to display for managers that I can't yet do due to the structure of the database but hopefully this will change in the future!