This has been a busy year with lots of swimmers entering Open Meets with a corresponding need to keep results and PB information up-to-date. Inevitably I make some mistakes along the way, so many thanks to the eagle-eyed amongst you (primarily Pam Brown and Jane Willis) for spotting them and letting me know. If anyone else finds errors in any of the website information, do please let me know.
This time last year I reported that we hoped to implement a website area for gala selections and I am pleased to say this has proved very successful in giving the Team Managers an instant view of the availabilities of the selected swimmers. A few people are not entering their availability on the website and I would urge you to do so as soon as possible after getting the gala slips so Team Managers know the status. For parents – I would also suggest checking the selection lists regularly in case that all important gala slip never got to you and is just a soggy mess in the bottom of a swimming bag!! If you are not available for a gala, please indicate this on the website but also PLEASE notify the Team Manager directly too. As we move into 2009, I hope we may be able to implement some kind of e-mail notification for gala selection so the Team Manager can easily let everyone know they are selected and also send out reminders to those who haven’t indicated their availability – this of course will rely on you checking your e-mails. Please let the Membership Secretary know if you change e-mail address at any time.
The switch to using Teamopolis last year gave us the opportunity to create Member forums. Thus far the use of the forums has been fairly light but I would encourage you to use them. There are Forums already set up for ‘For Sale & Wanted’ and ‘Lost & Found’ (the latter is always worth checking if your child has left something behind after training) and also for ‘General’. All members with a login can post new discussion topics into any of these forums so if you have something to share with the membership or are looking for information about something, why not try them out.
As can be seen from the chart below, website usage continues to grow with both the Lycos and Teamopolis session numbers being higher than the corresponding 2007 figures in most months. Although having separate numbers for Teamopolis and Lycos makes it tricky to know how many separate users accessed the site, it looks like there is an average in excess of 2000 per month compared to around 1800 in 2007.
The club website continues to be an important (and often the primary) means of communicating information to all our members on a variety of topics. In particular, we make use of the splash page for important news items which often need to be relayed at short notice (e.g. pool closure causing cancellation of swim sessions) so we would encourage you to visit on a regular basis (even daily) to keep abreast of what is going on. These important notices don’t require you to have a login, but you do need one to access the forums, gala results, PB records etc. If you don’t already have access to the members areas, fill in the form on the website by following the ‘Password’ link on the left hand side of the site.
If you have ideas on what you would like to see on the site and how we can improve it to suit the needs of Club members, please let me know – after all it’s your club. You can send me an email at webmaster@busheyasc.org or talk to me at any of the club sessions.
Kevin Binns
Webmaster
Website Statistics for 2008
