Suggestions To Improve Your Team Links

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:06 pm

This is a thread I started on the NFBC boards because right now we are working on that site. We will roll everything out for football as soon as this is done, but here's the idea behind what we have planned in the very near future. Please provide suggestions to help us improve your MY TEAMS area:

Okay, last week I had a good conversation with the folks at STATS about improving and expanding one part of our game site: The user link. The way we have your MY TEAMS area now is a mess for those folks who do multiple events/sports with us and right now there is nothing you can learn about another member by clicking on his team name. I want to change all of that.

Ultimately, I'd love to see you folks almost have your own MY SPACE section, but I know that is well down the road. But in reality it would be cool to allow you to put as much or as little personal information in an area for all to see along with historical data about you when it comes to your participation in the NFBC and the NFFC. That way when you find out what league you are in and who your competitors are, you'll be able to learn more about them and make this more of a "local" league flavor.

So here's the first steps we are taking here and then I want you to provide more suggestions so that I can take them to STATS:

1. We are doing a quick re-design of the NFBC home page to create the left-hand navigational links more similar to the NFFC site. Right now they are just jumbled and inconsistent as we added new links as our event expanded. By next week, the links will be categorized, the satellite info will be separate from the live events and the Online Championship will be on its own as well. We'll have separate links for the $125, $250, $500 and $1000 satellite leagues and the Registration page will be categorized and organized better.

2. Next up we are creating a new splash page to send newcomers to in order to understand everything we are offering. We can't do that on the NFBC page alone, so we'll have a page before that to explain everything. We hope that this initial page will explain the three baseball events we are offering this year: Live drafts and auctions; private online satellite leagues; and the 12-team NFBC Online Championship. If we can explain those perfectly on the splash page, then the NFBC home page will be easier to use.

3. As part of that redesign, we will improve your user page. The first thing we'll do is create tabs for your MY TEAMS page, allowing you to just tab your list of 2009 NFBC teams, 2008 NFBC teams, 2008 NFFC teams, etc. That has obviously been needed for some time and will be done now. We'll also automatically create a history of your NFBC and NFFC teams that will be displayed when teams click on GREG AMBROSIUS, for instance. I don't have all of the details for what will be displayed or what you can decide to display, but STATS has told me that they have all past history and it can be displayed. We'll also create an area where you can add some user profile information, but again I don't know how much at this point.

4. Down the road, I'd love to expand that user profile to include downloadable photos and more. It's time to find out more about each member and have this historical data easily accessible for all to see and we're going to get that done.

Okay, that's part of the plan. As I stated at the end of the season, we are working more closely with STATS and earlier this year to get us set up the way we want for this season and many seasons to come. I like the arrangement we've put together and STATS is more than willing to help us improve the site. NBC Sports is also providing staffers to help with the redesign of the splash page.

So here's your chance: Send suggestions to me via e-mail at [email protected] or post them here and I'll forward to STATS. We have several projects to finish first, but any and all suggestions will be considered for 2009. Those changes will also be done on our football site and in 2009-10 we are planning for a basketball site here and possibly one or two more sports. So this could be a lot of fun.

Thanks all and I look forward to the thoughts and the suggestions. It's a down economy, so we want to do our best to make this worth your time, money and effort to play with us.

kjduke · Post by **kjduke** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:14 pm

Great stuff Greg!

The only thing that hits me off the top of my head is that DC league's should be separate from other satellites too since we don't have to manage those.

Love the myspace-type concept. I just commented in another thread that it would be great to be able to link from MB names here to their respective owners' team. Even better to link to that player's NFFC myspace.

Any thoughts to having a group of beta testers like you did for the FAAB changes last year? I thought that was a good idea that worked out great.

lumpy463 · Post by **lumpy463** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:21 pm

Since we love the DC format, I would like the live scoring pages to show the best lineup at that time.
At a minimum, can you get them to quit sending e-mails about a bye player in the staring lineup for DC teams.

Woking on #6

Derek "Lumpy" Anderson

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:17 pm

Originally posted by Derek Anderson:
Since we love the DC format, I would like the live scoring pages to show the best lineup at that time.
At a minimum, can you get them to quit sending e-mails about a bye player in the staring lineup for DC teams.

Woking on #6

Derek "Lumpy" Anderson Wow, I'm not sure if the programmers can do that for the DC Live Scoring, but it's a cool thought. I'll send the request to STATS. Interesting.

Yeah, I'll work on STATS to stop the e-mails for that one Lumpy. Interesting, I didn't know those went out for the DC Leagues.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:20 pm

Originally posted by KJ Duke:
Great stuff Greg!

The only thing that hits me off the top of my head is that DC league's should be separate from other satellites too since we don't have to manage those.

Love the myspace-type concept. I just commented in another thread that it would be great to be able to link from MB names here to their respective owners' team. Even better to link to that player's NFFC myspace.

Any thoughts to having a group of beta testers like you did for the FAAB changes last year? I thought that was a good idea that worked out great. Yeah, good idea. Initially it will be very basic with historical data in the NFBC and NFFC that STATS has and can load easily. I've asked them to create an area where each user can put contact info, personal info, etc., and hopefully that will be available initially. Then the next stage is adding the creative stuff to almost make this an NFFC MY Space page. I'm sure we'll need some beta testers for that and you can be included.

This will all take time, but it makes sense and it's needed as we enter our sixth year. We'll start with NFBC 2009 and work this all into football next.

See, now there's a reason to come to Arizona next weekend and hob-nob with me and RT and others.

Inf4life · Post by **Inf4life** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:20 pm

I'm not sure if this is related and probably isn't Greg. It's been brought up many a time but when do you see us being able to see Live Scoring for other leagues?

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:23 pm

Originally posted by Go Getta:
I'm not sure if this is related and probably isn't Greg. It's been brought up many a time but when do you see us being able to see Live Scoring for other leagues? I can ask STATS if that's possible down the road. I don't have an answer on that now, but I'll find out.

Inf4life · Post by **Inf4life** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:31 pm

Thanks a lot Greg.

kjduke · Post by **kjduke** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:21 pm

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
quote:Originally posted by Derek Anderson:
At a minimum, can you get them to quit sending e-mails about a bye player in the staring lineup for DC teams.

Woking on #6

Derek "Lumpy" Anderson Yeah, I'll work on STATS to stop the e-mails for that one Lumpy. Interesting, I didn't know those went out for the DC Leagues. [/QUOTE]This is a setting that we can turn off within the league site.

[ October 25, 2008, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: KJ Duke ]

renman · Post by **renman** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:57 pm

Wow... great stuff...

This is a perfect example of fresh creative stuff that will/can "professionalize" the NFFC and make it stand out as the most prestigeous fantasy football competition that exists.