Initial Feedback - Wow!

Hey Folks --

Wow! The initial response to the site has been nothing short of phenomenal; I never imagined it would grow so quickly so fast. The feedback I have received has been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you all so much for the kind words about the site; I appreciate it more than you know :)

I have received some questions and suggestions for improvement to the site. Let me go over some of the more commons ones here:

What are you going to do about inactive games? How are you going to keep the data on the map up to date?

If a game has not been updated in 4 or 6 months (I haven't decided which yet) then I'm going to send an email to the game coordinator asking if the game is still active. That email will have a one-click link in it that allows the game owner to refresh the game for another X months. If the email goes unanswered for 2 weeks, then the game will either automatically be deleted or moved into an "inactive games" bucket (I haven't decided this either). Of course nobody knows about this feature yet because it hasn't been X months yet ;)

Have you heard of ultimap.org?

I had seen ultimap.org briefly a few years ago, but not anytime recently. I've had it in my head to do this with pickup games ever since I made a map for the Houston Ultimate Community's website.

What does this mean for the UPA's pickup page?

It doesn't mean anything right now :) I haven't contacted anyone at the UPA yet, but I think I will soon. Which leads into my next question . . .

This is great, but there are already places on the Internet for this. I don't want to have to update my game in more than one place!

Good point; I agree completely. My attitude toward this is in the spirit of greater community benefit, so I'm all ears for collaboration. The webmaster of ffindr.com already contacted me and I think I'll be working with him to collaborate game information and possibly some future projects. Basically I want to do the best thing possible for the Ultimate community; not try and compete or squeeze anyone out. More on this as I have more information.

As far as the site is concerned: no major problems. I did fix a small display bug in IE and made a few tweaks to the edit page as I saw how people interpreted the input fields (ie: by "Facilities" I really meant "Fields". I don't think people care if there are bathrooms at your game ;) The server has handled the increase in traffic without blinking an eye and noone has reported any major technical errors so far.

For those who are curious about how many games are on the site I set up a small status page mostly for my own reference: http://pickupultimate.com/dashboard (update: this information can now be found on the stats page). I may turn this into a full-blown "Stats" tab on the main page if it generates enough interest. As of this writing there are 148 active games and 3 comments. I don't think people are all that interested in the comments functionality so far. Maybe people don't understand it?

I also appreciate how many people have said they shared the site with others. If you like the site the best thing you can do to support it is to share it with the community. The more people who know about the site the more useful it will be. Keep forwarding those emails; I'm going to make a Facebook fan page tonight so it can spread through that social network. Edit: http://www.facebook.com/pages/PickupUltimatecom/55988076974

Thanks again for all the positive emails; your feedback makes my day :)

-- Chris