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Why
the new "look and feel"?? |
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One of the
most important functions the Maca web site serves is to keep the
regional chess community informed of upcoming events. Both the
organizers and players have come to depend on the site for their event
information. |
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As it also
happens, keeping the listings up to date is
the most time consuming and error prone activity involving the web
site. Typically, organizers design their event
information, create a flyer, send the information to Chess Life, Chess
Horizons and the Maca site. At the Maca site, we take the file
sent us, cut and paste it into the pages and then try to make it a
little pretty to make it readable. For clubs like the BCC which
list on the site and have an event every day, this takes a
considerable amount of time. In addition, organizers each have
their own style of presenting the information and vary in what types
of information they provide. All this opens up the window of
opportunity for mistakes to be made in transferring the information to
the web and for an inconsistent presentation. |
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What could be done to improve the
situation ? |
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The ideal
solution would be for organizers to "Self-Serve". By this we
mean, let them post their own information directly. We would
also want all the listings to be consistent among all events by all
organizers so that we, the players can find the information we need.
Self-Serve also gets the web team out of the middle. That is to
say, we no longer have to duplicate the effort already expended by the
organizer to re-create the information on the site and any errors that
appear there can't be due to our translation. |
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Our solution |
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We created a
database to hold all the information about an event. Having a
database forces the information into nice and neat, consistent little
"buckets" so to speak. This allows a high level of consistency
when presenting the data. |
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The database
resides on the Maca site and provides the information as requested by
the user when they select from among the options available on
the web page. |
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Our first
phase of development will be to get all the existing Event information
into the database and provide visitors to the site, several options
for viewing the data. Until phase two is complete, the Maca Web
team will perform entry and edits to the database. |
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Our second
phase of development will be to provide a means by which the
organizers will be able to enter and edit their own Event information
without assistance from the Web team. |
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Where we are in our Plan |
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On Sunday,
June 2nd, 2002 the first phase of development was completed and the
new pages incorporated into the web site. |
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Some of the
benefits and features provided by now
by this phase are: |
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 | Consistent presentation of all events listed |
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| Calendar view for seeing things in a higher level
perspective. |
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| A flyer with entry form is automatically
generated for you. Note, the flyer can be saved to your own
computer, opened up in MS Word and then fine tuned for printing
flyers. You may find this good enough to avoid making a
separate flyer. Just enter your event on the Maca site and the
work is done for you. |
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| Multiple filtering of events to allow both you
and general users to quickly view the types of events that they are
interested in. |
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| Organizers using the filtering can quickly check
the dates and information for your own events to catch any data
entry or planning errors. |
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Phase two has
the following benefits and features planned: |
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| Organizers will enter and edit (only) their own
events. |
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| Remove the "middle man" from the process.
This eliminates translation errors and delay in getting your events
posted or changed. |
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| New events and changes will be immediately
viewable on the site. |
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| Copying any of your events that are in the
database. This lets you: |
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| Quickly create your new events to be like your
old events. Just modify the dates and any other particulars
that are different |
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| Save a lot of time getting new events posted |
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| Improve consistency on how you present your
events |
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| Additional Export formats such as TLAs may be
developed over time and depending on requests. |
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