I have heard several TDs say that they can’t find information necessary for them to become tournament directors and submit reports on the USCF website. This is true.
Some very important documents and forms such as the application to become a club TD and the official rating report form are located at http://www.uschess.org/about/forms/. The only place I’ve found a link to this page isin the links on the side of the What’s New page. I have requested that our web master place links to this page on both the TD and ratings area.
There’s also a ‘Brochures and Forms’ link in the left sidebar on the USCF home page.
The USCF website could stand a lot of work.
There are around 30,000 separate files in all the web directories, navigation is not consistent, and the graphical design is, well, ugly.
If you look at a copy of Chess Life and at the USCF home page, you would not be convinced they’re both about the same organization.
I still like the idea that came out of the web workshop in LA a year ago: Start with a brand new home page that initially has one link on it–to the current (old) website, and build a new website from scratch. Keep what’s good (not much), fix the rest.
I think there’s a lot that’s good on the USCF website. The problem is that the home page (essentially a main menu) is a mess.
There seems to be a small menu (8 items) across the top of the page, then another small menu (another 8 items) just below the title line, then still another small menu (10 items) down the left side. There is some overlap (MSA appears twice), and some features are not on ANY of these menus – including this forum.
When I first joined this forum, I found out about it on RGCP. Even today, I’m not sure I could locate this forum from the home page. Instead, I access it from the separate URL given on RGCP.
Rules updates are another hard-to-find item (is it under Tournaments?). I’ve run across it once or twice, but I can never remember how to get back to it.
So – no big deal to improve the website. Just reorganize the home page.
It does need more then a face lift, it needs to be taken out behind the building and shoot. The USCF webpage is as much fun and as good as the Sam Sloan webpage.
yes, under “tournaments” and then “tournament directors”. Actually, I’ve got shortcuts all over my desktop and in favorites folder for exactly the same reason: I can never remember where they are on the website. It is a mess, but I agree again, that there’s a lot of useful stuff there. It needs to be cleaned up. The biggest problem is finding any one thing in particular. Also, there’s a lot of stuff that’s out of date, or just needs to be updated. Although one thing that I’ve found useful is the “What’s New” section, uschess.org/updates.php which is usually my first stop, as it seems to be updated weekly.
I completely agree that the website needs a whole lot of work especially with navigation as you all have said. But something that I think is even more important is keeping it up to date.
I design websites for a living and I can’t remember a time when I ever liked this site. I mean it isn’t outright horrible, but the navigation and layout just erk me
By now I know where to find everything because I have clicked just about every link possible.
I am impressed with the improvement that Mr. Nolan and the other staff are providing with the website and other things. Keep up the good work.
Also if you ever need help let me know. I give free advice all the time
I think what you need to realize, agree with me or not, is that USCF doesn’t have a lot of resources, money or people.
Yea, you have motivated people like Nolan, but you only go so far with helping. I’ve worked on a project for years and you eventually get burnt out when you don’t get paid on it.
I doubt Nolan gets a cent from USCF to do any of the work he does. Nolan strikes me as the type that would love to gut out USCF’s technology infrastructure and actually make it more effecient, instead of waiting a month for a tournament to get rated.
They’ve made msa.uschess.org which shows they have the brains to do something. If they continue to hire part time people to input in tournaments, I really don’t see why USCF can’t invest 10 grand or so and redo everything.
Maybe I’m off-base on this, but this is how I see how it’s been. An outdated system that needs to be updated.
$10,000 might not even get you a good start on a redesign of the website.
Quality work doesn’t come cheap, and a good conceptual design for a new website will take some serious design work, with a lot of consultation with USCF staff and other affected parties, and a LOT of web programming to implement.
Deciding which of the roughly 30,000 pages of existing material to convert to the new website, updating as necessary, will take a lot of time, too.
(I’m not working for free, either.)
I"m probably not the right person to do the new web design, though I would be interested in working on the programming and conversion aspects, in which case I’d like to at least be involved in the conceptual design to improve the odds that it isn’t something unimplementable.
Some of the “old timers” may not care about the website. Even website aside, I’d personally would like to see a faster turn around time on rating tournaments.
But I suppose those go hand in hand, with the modifications nolan is creating, submitting tournaments online should at least cut the snail mail time by a few days.
I guess I wonder why tournaments stay so long in the “to be rated” queue, or has it always been that way?
Based on the ‘date received’ and ‘date rated’ fields in USCF’s historical records, going back several years the typical tournament was rated within about a week of when it was received, though during the peak scholastic season (Feb-April) two week processing times were common.
There are probably two factors behind the current typical three-week delay:
The ratings department has a fairly small staff, several of whom only work part time. Because of cutbacks in the past year, some tasks that used to be performed in other departments are now done by ratings staff.
Once you get behind, it is very hard to get caught up.
Have you ever considered using a Content Management System to run the website. I am just learning how to use them myself for some websites I develop and the results look really good. They usually run on php programming and a mysql database such as this phpBB board.
Just a thought.
If you guys weren’t so far away from me I would be happy to come and volunteer some hours to get the data entry done
When do you guys plan on moving to Tennessee or is that out of the woodworks right now?
A final decision hasn’t been made on the move yet. It will need to be made fairly soon in order to be out of the current offices when the lease runs out in May.
James Riker: Drop me an email (mnolan@uschess.org), let’s talk about web designing issues.
