Thursday, March 12, 2009

New Features: Aliases, Cities, RSS Feeds, Stats

Hey Folks --

Just wanted to let everyone know about some new features I added to the site:

Aliases. Game owners now have the option to use an alias instead of a game ID. This works for linking to your game as well as for logging in:
http://pickupultimate.com/map/view/penultimates
http://pickupultimate.com/game/login/penultimates

You can still use your game ID if you'd like, but I thought an alias would be easier to remember and more search engine-friendly.

Cities. There are now city-specific links to certain regions of the map:
http://pickupultimate.com/map/city/nyc
http://pickupultimate.com/map/city/losangeles

The list of cities is pretty small right now because I'm inputting them manually, but I will add more as I get a chance. Hopefully this will let the webmasters of city and region-specific websites link to their city on the site so they don't have to keep tabs on all the local pickup games in their area. If you don't see your city on the list you can help me add it by finding the center latitude/longitude and sending me an email or posting on the blog. You can use this site to find the coordinates.

All games RSS feed. I added an all-games RSS feed so others can use the data on the site. Also hopefully it will help to increase search engine traffic to games. The feed is here.

Stats Page. Finally I added a stats page. It's pretty basic and could use some more styling, but I needed a place to list the cities and thought the game data might be interesting. I'm hoping for this page to evolve more in the future.

The site is still growing, albeit slower than when it first launched. It would be nice to get more of an international precense; I think I'll take a sign to Paganello and try to get some exposure there.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me emails, left comments on the blog, or joined the Facebook group; I appreciate your interest. Feel free to keep giving me feedback and don't forget to share the site with your friends :)

Thanks!

-- Chris

4 comments:

  1. HI

    Pick up site is great.
    Any option to promote tournament too?

    Cheers from Bangkok Ultimate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Chris,

    I just ran into your pickup ultimate site and it is great!

    Cheers, keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I built a dynamic website several years ago to track how many players are coming to our UF pickup games on any given day, and who they are. Hundreds of UF players in the Salt Lake and Orem/Provo area have been using my system for years. We got sick of relying on group emails and texts every day to figure out if we have enough to play. This solves that problem very nicely.

    100% free. Includes discussions and game location weather reports + it's mobile friendly. This would be a great addition to pickupultimate.com. I could do a seamless integration, or people can just use it on the side.

    https://www.instant-rsvp.com/

    ReplyDelete