Welcome back! If this is your first time here, then just welcome. We are starting development, as we normally do, on changes to League.com. We begin in early June and finish in late July just before preseason begins. (This year, that would be August 9th when Buffalo plays the Titans. Big Changes Are In The Works This system is based in a CMS called Joomla. The version we've been running for the past few years is now obsolete so we're doing a full rewrite of the code for the latest technology. But if you're not a CMS person, then you don't care about this part. Here are the features we plan to change for the 2009 season: 1. League has been redesigned to handle more than just the NFL season. The downside we've had here is that League is only active ~ 20 weeks out of the year. We are going to change that so it can handle a few more sports making it viable for more of the year. 2. Last year, you were able to be a member of many groups. That will not change. However we are going to modify this so that you have the option of using your same picks in other groups. Think of it as pick cloning. Once you make a set of picks, you'll be able to clone those into another group. If you want to make changes in that group, you'll be able to edit your picks before saving. 3. Picks for games not started will remain open. For example, at 1pm the picks will close only for the 1pm games. The rest of the picks will remain open until they begin. 4. Confidence points are being removed. What you will do instead is arrange your list of picks in order from most to least confident. This gives the group manager the option of defining what a win is worth. 5. Group manager will be able to decide how many games are counted. 6. We're adding spreads for each game, with data provided by TheSpread.com . If you don't know how that works, don't worry. This will be an optional item that managers can select when then create their group. 7. A central scoring database has been designed so that points are calculated in near realtime. 8. Tiny results for you and your group can optionally be sent to your phone and/or email. 9. Improved social networking will be included but as part of the CMS (we don't want to reinvent wheels that are already out there) 10. We will have real prizes this year so we can attract more players. There are many more changes but that gives you an idea of the direction we're going. If you would like to help with the testing part, we'll be looking to recruit a group of testers that will use the new system as we build it. If you would like to be part of this, and get a pretty excellent t-shirt that says you were part of the development team, drop us a note so we can put you on the list. Testing will begin in early July, |
