OLD TIME SPORTS
Administrative Guide
Last revised: August 26, 2006
Table of contents
Section
3 – Collection Management
Section
6 – Other Information and Notes
Old Time Sports (OTS) is a
network of websites that link together collectors of sporting event audio and
video. The hobby of collecting old games
has boomed over the last few years and the number of collectors has increased
greatly. Each collector has their own
unique identity on the web and their own collection of favorite games, teams,
and sports.
The OTS network is simply a
network of similar sites that allow collectors to take advantage of some
built-in functions while maintaining their own identity. Once a new website is setup the site admin
for that website has available to them the following functionality:
·
Collection
management
·
Trade tracking
·
List comparisons
·
Customizable
website templates
·
Site themes
·
Personalized
message boards
·
Polls and quizes
·
Featured games
·
FAQ’s
·
Favorite links
·
Sports
statitistics (linked to the individual inventory)
While the site does provide
a lot of functionality it is understood that it can appear to be a complex task
of getting it setup and maintaining it.
In all actuality it is very simple to get the basics going and the
additional site options can be configured at some later point as the site admin
becomes comfortable with the new environment.
Once your site has been
created the first thing that you’ll want to do is to customize it to your
personal liking. This section will cover
some of the basic things that you can do and the more advanced features will be
discussed later in this document.
Before you can change any
settings on your website you will need to login with the administrative userid
and password that was provided to you.
Once logged in you will see a new panel on the left called SITE
ADMIN. It is in this panel where most of
the administrative functions are maintained.
When your site was initially
created it was given many default settings such as the name of your site, the
colors for your site, the contact info for your site, etc… Via the MY SITE page you can change many of
the characteristics of your site including the following:
·
Change the name of your site –If you’re not happy with the name created you can
change it to pretty much whatever you want.
·
Modify the contact info for your site - There are
several functions on your website that create automatic emails which get sent
out. For example, whenever one of your
visitors sends a message via your CONTACT ME page, an email is automatically
sent. Also, whenever a trade is
requested from one of your visitors, it automatically sends an email. The email address that it sends to is
maintained in this panel via the Contact Name/Email Address fields. There can be up to 2 contacts defined for
each OTS website.
·
Modify your site theme (colors) – You probably won’t want to keep the default color
theme for your site. To change it simply
select from the predefined themes made available on this page. You can also create your own customizable
themes and more detail on that is provided later.
·
Modify your site banner – If you’re not happy with the default banner on your
site it is on this page that you change it to point to your own. Please know that the banner image is
automatically resized to 985px wide by 75 px width. If banner dimensions are different than that
then it will ultimately look skewed.
·
Line break formatting – It is assumed that most of the OTS site admins will
not have a lot of HTML experience.
Therefore all sites are defaulted to use Plain Text line breaks. For those of you not familiar with the term
you need not be concerned much about it.
For those of you that want to use HTML line formatting (BR, P tags)
you’ll need to change the HTML Line Break… field from Plain Text to HTML
Friendly.
·
Show in other sites listing – The OTS Main Directory website makes available a list
of all websites included in the OTS network.
To exclude your site from that list simply change this field to NO.
Your panels are the
different blocks of content on either the left or right side of your
website. By default all OTS websites are
configured the same way in regards to which order they are displayed. Site admins have the ability to change that
order as well as to turn off panels and add new panels. This is all configurable via the My Panels
page.
When you view this page
you’ll notice that it separates the Left Side panels and the Right Side
panels. Some of these are special
administrative panels and you do not have the ability to change them or reslot
them. For the others, simply change the
slot to a different numerical value representing where you want them to
display. The lower the number, the
sooner they appear on the page. If the
Identifier is linked then that means you have the option to change the characteristics
of that panel. Simply click the link and
it will take you to the update page for that panel. From that panel you have the ability to:
·
Display on which side - Determine which side you want the panel displayed
on (left or right)
·
Height (in pixels) - By default the panel should automatically stretch to the minimum
height required to display the information.
If you would like for it to be larger simply increase the value in this
field.
·
Scroll message – By changing this value to Yes the information that you display in
this panel will scroll up the panel.
·
Show on HOME page only – If this option is set to Yes then the panel that
you are configuring will only appear on the HOME page and none of the
others. This is good for simple
advertisements and such.
·
Private or Public – Not currently used.
·
Panel heading – This is the text that will appear in the top panel heading section
·
Panel message – And this is the actual information that will display in the
panel. You can enter eith Plain Text in
this field or HTML. As with all HTML
content pages on your site please special care to close all HTML tags or else
it could have an effect on the rest of the page.
Along with the default
panels that are provided with your site, Site Admins have the option to create
as many additional panels as they’d like.
To add a new panel simply click the Add New Panel at the top of
the page.
Themes are nothing more than
a set of colors for your website. The
theme for your site can be selected via the My Site page. To add new themes or update any of your
existing themes, simply go to the MY THEMES page.
From this page you can set
the name of your theme, assign it a category, and tell designate it as either a
Private theme or a Public theme. Public
themes appear in the overall theme list for all site admins. Other site admins can then use your theme but
they won’t have access to change it.
The main part of this page
is the part that contains all of the predefined fields that are available to be
changed. There are too many of these to
get into detail so the best thing is for you to simply play around with these
and find out which fields do what. The
values for these color fields can either be one of three types. Either verbiose (RED, GREEN, BLUE, etc…), hex
(6 characters preceeded by a # symbol) or RGB (rgb(255, 255, 255), rgb(0, 0,
0), etc…
There are also a few
additional fields at the bottom of the page that allows you to to override the
default OTS banner and fields which override any colors defined for the Panel
headers and content areas.
Each site administrator has
the ability to add polls and quizes to their site. This is a somewhat limited feature but it can
provide some extra fun for your visitors.
To add a poll simply go to
the MY POLLS page and enter the following fields.
·
Make Poll Active – If this field is checked then the poll is active and will appear on
your site.
·
Type –
Select whether you want this to be a poll or a quiz
·
Sport –
This is dropdown allows you to select the page type to display the poll
on. It checks your games inventory to
determine what sports you have available and lets you choose from them. The default is ALL which means that the poll will
show up on all pages regardless of the type of page being displayed.
·
Panel Header – This is the heading for the poll/quiz.
·
Question –
This is the question for the poll/quiz.
Try to keep this to no more than 2 lines in the actual panel
itself. Any more than 2 lines will cause
spacing problems between the poll panel and the panel below it.
·
Correct Answer – If this is a quiz then this field must match one of the 5 answers that
you type in below it.
·
Answer #1 through Answer #5 – Each poll/quiz can have up to 5 responses. If this is a quiz then one of them needs to
match the Correct Answer that you types in.
Content pages are nothing
more than free-form pages that allow you to enter any amount of text or HTML
that you’d like. While the magnitude of
this may not appear clear, these pages can be on of the most dynamic parts of
your site. Since these pages allow you
to type in HTML you have the ability to link to them from anywhere on the
site. That being the case you can
ultimately configure an entire book on your site if that’s what you’d
like. More applicable cases might be to
simply create informative pages for your visitors such as Trade Guidelines,
Special Sports pages, etc…
To add a new content page
simply go to the MY CONTENT page and enter the following fields:
·
Title – This
is simply for your use so you can identify your content pages from the list of
other content pages.
·
Detail data – This is the actual area where you type in your content. If your site is configured for Plain Text
(see MY SITE) then any blank lines that you enter in this page will look correctly. If your site is configured as HTML Friendly
then you will have to enter your own HTML line break tags (BR, P, etc…). As with all HTML enabled areas on your site
please be sure to close all open tags or else the rest of your site may not
render correctly.
By default, every OTS site
has a panel turned on called FEATURED GAMES.
The purpose of this panel is to allow site admins to create featured
games for this site and provide commentary and/or links for those games. The actual commentary is maintained on the
page where you update your game details.
The MY FEATURES page simply lists out all games where you’ve entered
Featured Game commentary and allows you to either edit or remove the commentary. When you click edit you’ll be presented with
the Update Game Details page and you can change it there.
A couple of important notes
regards Featured Games.
·
Along with being
able to provide commentary, site admins can also optionally select the games in
question to be primary games. Any game
flagged as a primary game will show up on the websites home page in the
Featured Games panel. Please note that
only 1 game per sport can be flagged as the primary.
·
All games with
Featured Game commentary will be displayed in the Featured Games panel when a
sport-centric page is being displayed.
For example, if one of your visitors is doing a search on your NFL
Football games, then the Featured Games panel will display all of your NFL
Football featured games and not featured games for other sports.
In regards to your OTS
website, the terms forums and message boards should be considered to be
synonomys. Forums are simply a place for
you to create interactive areas for your visitors to post comments, questions, etc… You can define any number of forums that
you’d like and they all will appear when your visitors click the Message Boards
link from the QUICK LINKS panel.
The message boards are not
intended to be as robust as Aimoo or any other generic message board
system. However, the standard functionality
is available such as post new topics, reply to topics, quote topics, subscribe
to forums and/or topics, etc… Within the
Message Board pages all Site Admins have the ability to edit and/or delete
posts.
To setup a new message board
simply follow these steps:
·
From the Site
Admin panel click on the MY FORUMS link
·
From the My
Forums page click on the ADD NEW FORUM link
·
From the Add New
Forum page simply fill out these fields and click the ADD FORUM button. Your message board will automatically be
created and available to your visitors.
o Forum Name – All forums needs a descriptive name so your
visitors know where to post their messages.
o Status – Forums with a status of Inactive are not available
to your visitors
o Display
Order – The lower this number the
higher they appear in the drop-down list that your visitors see
o Allow
non-admin logged-in users to access this forum? – You have the ability to create new users on your
system and optionally flag them as being site admins (see My Users). If you set
this flag to yes then only those users defined as site admins for your site
will be able to access this particular forum.
o Allow
guests to access this forum? – Most
of your visitors will probably choose not to login to your system. By setting this flag to yes you will make the
forum available to all visitors of your site whether they login or not. If this flag is set to no then only logged in
users of your site can access the forum.
This page is simply an area
for you to keep up with any free-form and/or HTML text that you’d like. Nobody else can see it except for other users
defined as site admins for your site. As
an example, I use this page to keep up with all of the change requests that I
need to make to the site. It’s simple to
maintain and available to me anywhere I have internet access.
This page allows you to
create a site FAQ for your visitors.
When logged in as site admin you’ll have the option to add new FAQ
entries or udpate existing ones. The
field Display Order is the one that determined which order the FAQ’s are shown.
Many websites have a
collection of related links for their visitors to see. Your OTS website has this built-in and you
can add, update and delete entries on this page when you’re logged in as site
admin.
The primary purpose of your
website is to allow you to maintain an inventory of your sports videos and
audios. To enable you to do there are
several means in which you can add, update and/or delete your games. This section is an attempt to cover those
functions and provide the details required to keep up with your collection.
The easiest way to add games
is by using the Season Stats feature on your site. From that module you can simply point-and-click
your way through without having to do much of anything else.
For example, let’s say you
just received a 2 disk DVD set of the 9/18/78 Colts/Patriots Monday Night
Football game. Here are the steps
to add it to your inventory, the easy
way. Be sure that you’re already logged
in to your site before starting.
1. From the Season Stats panel, click the NFL Football
link. You will then be presented with
the NFLFootball – Statistics page.
2. From the NFLFootball – Statistics page, select “1978”
as the Year and “Colts” as the Team, then click the Search button. You will then be presented with a summary of
all of the Colts games and roster for 1978.
3. From the Colts game/roster page, simply click the
link for the date of the game that you’re wanting to add. For our example, click on 09/18/78. You will then be presented with the Add New
Game page and most of the relevant information has already been pre-entered for
you.
4. If you haven’t received the game yet and you don’t
want your users to know it’s on the way, just leave the Status as “new”. If you have the game on hand go ahead and
change the status to “active”. You can
always update this later.
5. At this point you don’t have to enter anything else
and you can simply click the Add Game button to add it to your inventory. If you know any of the rest of the info for
the game (ie: quantity, quality, ads, duration, etc…) go ahead and complete
those fields before clicking the Add Game button. You can always enter that additional info
later if you need to.
From the Site Admin panel
there is a link titled ADD 1 GAME. This
page allows you to enter all of the details for a particular game in your
collection. This same page is also used
when you choose to update a game in your collection. It is important to note that there are
several critical fields that must be populated when you add a game and the rest
are simply optional fields that you can use if you want to keep up with that
particular area.
The following is a list of
the fields available and a brief explanation of each.
|
Field name |
Values |
Description |
|
TYPE (required) |
Public |
This field
determines if the game will be displayed to your users or not. Any game set
to PRIVATE will not show up in any listing unless your signed on as the site
admin. |
|
STATUS (optional) |
Active |
This field
determines what the current status of the game is. If you choose Deleted,
Render or New then the game will not show up in any lists for your users, only
for site admins. |
|
SENDER (optional) |
Freeform |
This is a
freeform field that allows you to assign a senders name to the game. This is
useful for keeping up with who has sent you what games. |
|
TRADE NR (optional) |
Freeform |
When a
trade is requested on your site a TRADE NUMBER is automatically generated.
That trade number ties back all of the games being requested by an
individual. With that trade number you can also assign the games that you are
to receive from an individual and they will show up together when you view a
trade via the MY TRADES function. |
|
SPORT (required) |
Dropdown
list |
This is
pretty straightforward. The one thing to know about this field is that all of
the sports available in the dropdown list are pre-defined in the system. If
you have a sport not in that list please send a note via the Contact Us form
and we`ll get it added. |
|
YEAR (required) |
Freeform |
This is
the a freeform field that is used to represent the `season` for the game
being added. For example, SB 16 was played in January of 1982 but it
represented the 1981 season. I personally would enter 1981 for this game so
that it shows up with my other 1981 games when my users do a search. I use
this same philosophy for NCAA bowl games that take place in January. |
|
DATE (required) |
Freeform |
This is
the actual date that the game took place. It is a freeform field but it is
also REQUIRED. Even if you don`t know the date for the game you still
have to put something that`s a valid date. |
|
TYPE (optional) |
Freeform |
This
freeform field is used as a shortname to identify what type of game it is.
It`s limited to 10 characters but you can enter pretty much anything that you
want. This field is the one that is pre-populated in the dropdown on the
search form so consistency is ideal here. A few examples would be: SB for
Super Bowls, POST for post season games, REG for regular season games,
ALLSTAR for all star games, etc... |
|
WEEK (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
is used to further define the game itself and it is displayed on the search
results page. Even though the field is labeled as WEEK you can put anything
that you want to help identify the game. For NFL Football you might consider
putting WEEK #3 or AFC Conf, or Super Bowl, etc... For MLB Baseball you might
want to use Regular, ALCS #1, World Series #2, etc... |
|
(name is
required) |
Freeform |
This
combination of fields is very important for searches throughout the system.
While you can enter anything in either field it is strongly recommended to
put the teams city (or state) in the CITY field and the teams name in the
NAME field. The exception to that rule is college sports where it is
recommended to put the schools name in the NAME field. The reason being if
you put the teams nickname then you will wind up having cases of more than 1
school with the same nickname. |
|
(name is
required) |
Freeform |
Basically
the same thing as above except this set of fields represents the home team
instead of the visitors. |
|
PLAYED AT
CITY / STADIUM |
Freeform |
This set
of fields represents the location where the game was played. For example, if
it was an NFL game played in |
|
MEDIA (optional) |
DVD |
This is a
predefined list of options that represent what kind of media the game is on.
If there are media types missing just drop us a note via the Contact Us form.
|
|
QUANTITY (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
basically represents how many units of media are used to store the game. For
example, if it`s on 3 DVD`s then the Quantity field should be 3. |
|
MASTER (optional) |
Freeform |
This is a
freeform that allows you to identify if the game is an original master or
not. |
|
QUALITY (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
is used to store the quality of the game. It`s freeform so you can use
whatever scale you`re happy with. Some folks use the 1 to 10 scale while
others use the EX/VG/G/P scale. Or come up with your own method, just limit
it to 5 characters. |
|
ADS (optional) |
No |
This field
helps to identify whether or not the game has the commercials intact. Some
folks could care less about commercials while others will trade for only
games that have commercials. The options in the list are pretty much
straightforward. The one that might be confusing is `stays`. This basically
means that instead of going to commercials, the video feed stays with the
game instead. There are many reasons why this may be (network copy, satellite
feed, etc...) so to keep it simple we just labeled it `stays`. |
|
DURATION (optional) |
Freeform |
Some folks
like to keep up with the length of a game and this is the field to store that
value. An example for a 2 hour and 35 minute game would be 2:35. |
|
NETWORK (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
lets you identify the tv network that aired the game. |
|
ANNOUNCERS
(optional) |
Freeform |
And this
field allows you to identify the announcers that called the game. |
|
CONDITION
COMMENTARY (optional) |
Freeform |
This is a
large freeform field that allows you to maintain information regarding
possible quality issues. For example, if an NFL game starts in the 2nd
quarter you might consider making this field "JIP - Starts in the 2nd
quarter". You might also want to use this field to mention any
video/audio quirks or anything else regarding the overall condition of the
game. |
|
GAME
COMMENTARY (optional) |
Freeform |
This large
freeform field can be used to hold useful information regarding a game. For
example, 9/21/70 Jets/Browns was the first Monday Night Football game so this
would be a great place to mention that info for your users. |
|
FEATURED
GAME COMMENTARY (optional) |
Freefrom |
On your
OTS site you have a panel on the right called FEATURED GAMES. This panel
basically displays any games in your inventory that have information typed in
this field. One thing to note is that there will typically only be 1 game for
each sport displayed in this panel. The only time that all featured games for
a given sport are displayed is when your user is on a sport-centric page (ie:
doing a search of NFL games). In order to make a game the default featured
game to show on the other pages just change the PRIMARY flag from No to Yes. |
|
BOXSCORE
COMMENTARY (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
will probably be phased out for lack of usage. It`s simply a freeform field
that is displayed on the expaned Game Details page. Originally it was
intended to store freeform boxscore information but it`s tedious to keep up
with information this way. |
From the Site Admin panel
there is a link titled ADD MULTIPLE GAMES.
This page allows you to enter up to 25 games at a time on one page. The advantage is obvious in that you can
enter multiple games at a time. The
disadvantage is that you don’t have access to all of the fields that are
available via the ADD 1 GAME page.
The following is a list of
the fields available and a brief explanation of each.
|
Field name |
Values |
Description |
|
STATUS (required) |
Active |
This field
determines what the current status of the game is. If you choose Deleted,
Render or New then the game will not show up in any lists for your users,
only for site admins. If you choose New or Render then it will remain
available on this page for you to come back and update later. For example,
when I have games coming in from a trade I set the status to NEW. That way I
can come to this page and see all games that I haven`t received yet. Also,
the status of NEW keeps them from displaying to the normal end user. |
|
SPORT (required) |
Dropdown
list |
This is
pretty straightforward. The one thing to know about this field is that all of
the sports available in the dropdown list are pre-defined in the system. If
you have a sport not in that list please send a note via the Contact Us form
and we`ll get it added. |
|
YEAR (required) |
Freeform |
This is
the a freeform field that is used to represent the `season` for the game
being added. For example, SB 16 was played in January of 1982 but it
represented the 1981 season. I personally would enter 1981 for this game so
that it shows up with my other 1981 games when my users do a search. I use
this same philosophy for NCAA bowl games that take place in January. |
|
DATE (required) |
Freeform |
This is
the actual date that the game took place. It is a freeform field but it is
also REQUIRED. Even if you don`t know the date for the game you still
have to put something that`s a valid date. |
|
TYPE (optional) |
Freeform |
This
freeform field is used as a shortname to identify what type of game it is.
It`s limited to 10 characters but you can enter pretty much anything that you
want. This field is the one that is pre-populated in the dropdown on the
search form so consistency is ideal here. A few examples would be: SB for Super
Bowls, POST for post season games, REG for regular season games, ALLSTAR for
all star games, etc... |
|
WEEK (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
is used to further define the game itself and it is displayed on the search
results page. Even though the field is labeled as WEEK you can put anything
that you want to help identify the game. For NFL Football you might consider
putting WEEK #3 or AFC Conf, or Super Bowl, etc... For MLB Baseball you might
want to use Regular, ALCS #1, World Series #2, etc... |
|
VISITORS (required) |
Freeform |
This
single field is very important for searches throughout the system. While you
can enter anything in this field it is strongly recommended to put the pro
teams name or school name in this field. There is a place for the teams city
but it is not available on this page due to space limitations. |
|
HOME (required) |
Freeform |
Basically
the same thing as above except this field represents the home team instead of
the visitors. |
|
MEDIA (optional) |
DVD |
This is a
predefined list of options that represent what kind of media the game is on.
If there are media types missing just drop us a note via the Contact Us form.
|
|
QUANTITY (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
basically represents how many units of media are used to store the game. For
example, if it`s on 3 DVD`s then the Quantity field should be 3. |
|
QUALITY (optional) |
Freeform |
This field
is used to store the quality of the game. It`s freeform so you can use
whatever scale you`re happy with. Some folks use the 1 to 10 scale while
others use the EX/VG/G/P scale. Or come up with your own method, just limit
it to 5 characters. |
|
FROM (optional) |
Freeform |
This is a
freeform field that allows you to assign a senders name to the game. This is
useful for keeping up with who has sent you what games. |
|
TRADE NR (optional) |
Freeform |
When a
trade is requested on your site a TRADE NUMBER is automatically generated.
That trade number ties back all of the games being requested by an
individual. With that trade number you can also assign the games that you are
to receive from an individual and they will show up together when you view a
trade via the MY TRADES function. |
|
GAME
COMMENTS (optional) |
Freeform |
This large
freeform field can be used to hold useful information regarding a game. For
example, 9/21/70 Jets/Browns was the first Monday Night Football game so this
would be a great place to mention that info for your users. |
|
CONDITION
COMMENTS (optional) |
Freeform |
This is a
large freeform field that allows you to maintain information regarding
possible quality issues. For example, if an NFL game starts in the 2nd
quarter you might consider making this field "JIP - Starts in the 2nd
quarter". You might also want to use this field to mention any
video/audio quirks or anything else regarding the overall condition of the
game. |
Another primary purpose of
OTS websites is to allow visitors to make trade requests from your site. When your visitors view your inventory via
the Search pages they will have the option of adding games to their shopping
cart. From the shopping cart view page
they can optionally checkout and make the trade request. It’s at that point that the trade is logged
in the system and you will receive your automatic notification that a trade has
been requested.
To see a summary of your
trades you simply go to the SITE ADMIN / MY TRADES page. When you first go to this page you will see
several checkboxes at the top (on hold, requested, accepted, active, ready to
send, completed, cancelled). By checking
these boxes and clicking refresh you are basically telling the system to only
show you trades with those status’s. For
me personally I always leave Completed unchecked unless I’m trying to lookup an
old trade.
The second part of the page
displays the actual trades that match the checkboxes that you selected. From this section you’ll see a line
representing each trade with these fields being displayed:
·
Trade number
– This number is automatically generated by the system when the trade request
is made by the visitors. It is
hyperlinked so you can click on it to see the details of the trade.
·
Userid –
This field represents the user that made the trade. For non-logged-in users that make trade
requests, the userid will be nothing more than a long random number .
·
Date / Time
– This is simply the date and time the trade was requested.
·
Status –
This is the status of the trade. From
this page you can change the status to whatever valid trade status you’d like
it to be.
The details for a particular
page can be seen by clicking on the Trade Number from the Trade Summary
Page. This page shows most of the
information relevent to the particular trade along with address information
regarding the user that requested the trade.
The page is broken up into 4
sections:
1. Section #1 - contains the information for the visitor that
requested the trade including:
1.1. Name
1.2. Mailing address
1.3. Email address
2. Section #2 – contains the trade specific information including:
2.1. Trade number
2.2. Status (you can change this field on this page)
2.3. Requested on (date/time)
2.4. Comments (comments that the requestor made)
2.5. My Comments (additional comments for you to keep up
with that nobody else can see). Be sure
to click the [save] button when you update these comments.
3. Section #3 – Games that the requestor is to receive. In other words, games that you are to send to
them.
3.1. This is simply a summary listing of the games being
requested. You can remove games from the
list by checking the box beside of the game and clicking the [Remove Selected
Items] button.
3.2. You can also add games to the request but not from
this page. To add games to a trade you
must go through the normal search pages as though you are requesting a new
page. However, when you get to the
checkout page, enter the correct userid in the Userid field and enter the
specific Trade Number in the trade number field. Assuming you entered the right information,
the new games that you selected will be added to the initial trade.
4. Section #4 – Games that you are to receive via this trade. In other words, games that the requestor will
be sending to you.
4.1. This is a summary listing of all games that you are
expecting in return from the trade.
Currently, adding games to this list is somewhat obscure. You have to go to either the ADD 1 GAME page
or the ADD MULTIPLE GAMES page and enter the expected games there. The key fields to note are the Senders Name
and the Trade Number fields. Be sure
when entering these that you enter the correct Traders name (not their userid,
their first and last name) and the trade number that the games are tied back
to.
To keep things simple for
your visitors they are not required to create a profile and login. They can basically do most everything they
want without ever having to login.
However, it is beneficial for you to keep a list of these users so you
can keep up with their address information and trade history.
To create a new users for
your system you will have to logout first.
Then from the QUICK LINKS panel choose the CREATE PROFILE link. All of the standard fields are here
including:
·
Userid
(required)
·
Password (required)
·
The users email
address (required)
·
The users
website address
·
Name (required)
·
Street address
·
Street address 2
·
City
·
State
·
Zip
·
Country
·
Phone number
This is the same set of
steps that your visitors themselves will go through if they choose to create
their own profiles.
To display your complete
list of users simply click on the SITE ADMIN / MY USERS link. From this page you will get a summary listing
of every user that has a profile on your website. You can optionally click on the Userid to get
to the screen that lets you view and/or update specific details for that user. From that view/update page you can also see
the entire trade history for that userid.
The information above covers
most of the administrative functions of your site but still probably leaves
some questions. This section will try
and answer a few of those.
How do I see a list of the games in my inventory?
This is probably the most
common function of your site, to see a list of your games. When you entered the games into your
inventory you had to select the sport for the game. As new sports were entered, new links
automatically were generated in your QUICK LINKS panel.
To view games for a
particular sport just click the requested link in the Quick Links panel and you
will be prompted with the primary SEARCH page.
This page allows you and your visitors to filter out specific games that
you want to see. For example, you can
choose a start and end year, you can select only a specific team, etc… Once all of the relevent information is
selected simply press the SEARCH button.
You will either be presented with a summary listing page or a detailed
listing page, whichever you chose from the filter.
How do I update ‘existing’ games in my collection?
In order to update existing
games in your collection you will have to use the Search option that was just
explained.
If you chose to display a
‘detail’ listing then you will see a link on the right of each game called Update. Simply click this link and you will be
presented with the page to update the game details.
If you chose to display a
‘summary’ listing then you see see that the year is hyperlinked for each game
along with the date. If you click on the
date you simply see the details for that game.
If you click on the year you will be presented with the page to update
the game details.
How do I tie my inventory back to the Season Stats
for a given sport?
Currently all OTS sites have
a comprehensive stat system pre-built for NFL Football, MLB Baseball and NCAA
Football. In time more sports will be
available but it’s a time consuming process to gather that data and make it
available. Regardless, for those 3
sports mentioned there are in-depth pages that allow you to view previous
season statistics and roster information (no rosters for NCAA are available).
The Season Stats section is
automatically tied to your individual inventory. Many of the Stats pages have a link on them
showing whether or not you have the games in stock or not. When the games are ‘in stock’ your users can
click the link and see the details that you entered for the game.
To tie your inventory to
those stats you must be very precise in regards to the YEAR, GAME DATE,
VISITORS NAME and HOME NAME for your games.
If any of these fields don’t match the Season Stats then they won’t show
as being ‘in stock’ from the Season Stats pages.
How do I enter sports categories that don’t show in
the select lists?
It isn’t feasible to list
every possible sport and make it available in the drop-down list. Doing so would make it tedious for all site
admins to have to weed through the list and look over the obscure sports. For those sports not in the list you can
simply choose OTHER and put your details under that category. If a popular enough sport is omitted from the
list then I will gladly add it.
How can I hide games in my inventory from my
visitors?
Many collectors are
priviledged enough to have games in their collection that are not supposed to
be freely available. In order to keep
these games out of your visitors view simply set the Type to ‘private’ when
adding/updating the game. You will still
be able to see it when you do your searches but your visitors will not.
There is also one other way
to hide games. As games are
added/updated they are required to have a status. Games with a status of Deleted, New and
Render do not show up in the search lists for your visitors, only for you. I personally use these status fields as
follows but you can use them however you want:
When adding games, what are the ‘Condition
Commentary’ and ‘Game Commentary’ fields used for?
I use the ‘condition
commentary’ field to write in specifics about the quality of the game
itself. This field is show on the Search
page whether the user is displaying a summary view or detailed view. For example, if it’s a joined in progress
game that is missing the 1st quarter I would mention it in this
field.
I use the ‘game commentary’
field to write in specifics about a particular game itself. This information is displayed on the Search
page on when ‘Detailed’ view is requested.
For example, I used this field to tell my visitors things such as “This
was the first Monday Night Football game” or “This is the game where Reggie hit
3 home runs”, etc…
There is one other field
called ‘Boxscore Commentary’ which is a free-form field that is displayed on
the Game Details page for all sports excpet for MLB. At point I used to put NFL boxscores in this
field but it got to be too much extra work after awhile so I gave up.
How do I get games to show up in the NEW VIDEOS
panel?
Games will automatically
appear in this panel as you add them to your inventory. This panel is defined to show a count of all
sports that have had new games added to them within the last 2 weeks. It does not list games that are
non-displayable to your visitors as defined above in the section that talks
about hiding games.
How do I get games to show up in the MOST REQUESTED
GAMES panel?
These games are
automatically displayed as trade requests are made for them. Only the top 5 requested games will show up
at any given time.