Just an update (and a screenshot) regarding the new-look website I'm working on.

The screenshot below is just a development version, and there are still lots of menu options missing, as I haven't started those yet.

So this update is really just to say it is being worked on, and I am throwing in some niceties as I go - along with trying to plan ahead for all the improvements to the actual game engine that I want to work on after this. I think I have said previously that I'm building this new site to have different layers (site, endpoints, service, and data) so that adding and changing functionality will be more centralised and easier to work with longer term.

For now, I'm attempting to motor through copying as much as possible over - I'm currently on the positional training screen but have completed team selection and all transfer screens, which are the sections I consider to be some of the most complex, so now I'm hoping I can move a bit quicker through some of the simpler pages.

That's all for now - I figured a quick update would do no harm.

The big news is that there is a new Scottish 3rd division. Being based in the UK, the English and Scottish leagues are the most popular, so I decided to add one more just to see how it goes. I figured there are already a lot of unmanaged teams, so what harm can 16 more do......

Alongside that, I have made more major changes to the finances to get a better balance, or at least to start to.... 

Unfortunately, I only managed to half complete this on the 26th before I needed to get the games run (running on Saturday would have caused me more issues). I completed the final changes for the new season this morning so you may have seen some financial values look different for a few hours as I ran through and updated the correct ticket prices (for example) and reverse updated the data.

The balancing isn't finished yet, but it needs another season now so I suspect no changes for another 30 weeks unless I find something glaringly worse.

I appreciate salaries are the screw-up in most of my calculations, but I am constantly tweaking the contract system to try to improve this also. I have some ideas that could help all this on the new site I am working on, but as said previously, that isn't close to being finished.

You will have also noticed training didn't work quite right this week. However, it was the same for everyone and any improvements will still take place, as long as the skills being trained in aren't changed for the next few weeks. Trying to re-do that would also have been more problematic, so I just took the safest option.

Some smaller tweaks have also been made, but they are mainly related to changing systems so I can carry them across to the new site easier.

As always, I appreciate some won't like the changes I have made, but I can assure you I'm just trying to make the game fair for all. It doesn't benefit me to make changes that favour some over others. 

Hopefully I can progress the new site a lot more in 2026 (I'm currently on the mailbox system).

I trust you all have a happy new year.

I have something that I want to do with the game, and the best/only time I can do this is between game seasons.

Unfortunately, by pure bad luck, it times with me being out of the country this season and I don't want to wait another 30 weeks. The last league matches are on the 19th December, and the next ones for the new season are scheduled for the 26th December.

My intention is to disable the daily process on the 25th (as long as I can find access) and then it won't run automatically until I have done my task.

If all goes well with travel, then this will mean I make my changes on the 26th (but much later than the matches would have been) and then set the games to run very late on Friday - failing that, they will play on Saturday (Sunday at the very latest).

I'm hoping my work won't take too long, and it will just be late on the Friday - but let's see.

Just be aware that the games for week 1 of the new season may run delayed - I shall try to keep you up to date with a news article (or 2).

I have been working a lot on the game in terms of little tweaks quite regularly, but the main work I have been doing is a complete new site build.

There are a couple of reasons for this, which may mean very little to the majority of you. One is that the site is built using, what is now, a very old framework (over 10 years, which is a long time in technology terms). This means that it isn't as flexible with modern devices as it should be, and also is starting to require more and more 'sticking plasters' to keep it running as well as I'd like. I did try to upgrade it to the latest version of the same framework but, partly due to reason number 2, it started to become a thankless task and I reverted it all.

Reason number 2 is the fact that modern applications now work very differently to how I built most of this in terms of data. Therefore, I needed to change the system to have a separate data service that the site can interact with. I had been doing this with any new features over the last few years anyway, but anything built originally is still working with a merged web and data layer. So it's a bit of a mix and needs standardising - if only for my own sanity!

There is a 3rd reason in the fact it is good practice for my day job, but you'll care even less about that.

So a new site is underway which, once complete, will mean a complete decoupling of site and data. In theory, this means that anybody can build applications to link to the data (not just I) and the data layer will make sure all data is correct at all times. Plus, any future site re-builds by myself will also mean it's just the site and not anything to do with data management. 

It basically makes things much simpler for me and enables me to make other changes far easier.

I appreciate the current site was also built to move forward with technology - and it did - but people keep changing technology........

Anyway, that is the big job I'm currently on with. I still have an awful lot to do, but it is progressing pretty regularly in the background. I'm also attempting to make it multi-language, so we'll see how that goes.