Hello Everybody

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dcrobertson01
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:24 am

Hello Everybody

Post by dcrobertson01 »

Thought I would just say Hi to you all, and say a bit about me, why I've installed Zuluru, and what I hope I'll be doing with it.

About nine and a half months ago (I remember because it was around the time my second son was born), I was trying to get a Touch Rugby Team together for my oldest son. About half the team from the previous year had moved up to another grade, and I got preoccupied with other things. The league is arranged around people forming their own teams and then joining the league as a team - rather than most kids sports, where you sign up and the kids get put in a team and it is all done for you. It seems to be mostly a social league for adults and works for them, but for parents wanting to get their under sevens into a team, it is not so easy. I thought there must be a better way of doing it.

I searched the net, and did not find anything open source that came close. I don't recall finding anything that worth installing and trying out. The online for a fee services did not appear to cater for children either - where parental consent and contact details are needed, and so forth.

So I threw together a Drupal site where parents could register their kids, form teams, print out registration forms and so on - pretty basic to do with Drupal. We formed a couple of new teams that joined the league a couple of weeks late, and found teams for several other players. All in all about thirty kids got to play who probably wouldn't have.

I made a couple of poor decisions with my site, and after the season got going, I kind of left it. The season ended recently, and I was thinking of starting again from scratch and spending a bit more time planning, but found Zuluru.

I have installed it and am having a look around. It seems to tick the important boxes, but there are some things I am still not clear about. We have schools which organize school teams and register them (Franchises?) and other schools that don't, and teams that are made up from Rugby Union and League clubs that play in the winter, there have to be at least three girls on the field at all times but the total number playing is more than six by agreement before the game. So I will have to ask more specific questions at a later time.

I'll be showing Zuluru to the people who organise the league in a few days time to see what they think. The problem is that they just take the completed team registrations and make up the draw. All the things that make it difficult for parents don't concern them. I'll have to look into it to see how Zuluru can make their life easier.

If we do use it, I'm keen to help out with the software. I did used to develop in PHP a long time ago - before sites got this complicated, before frameworks and PHP bug trackers. I have been a Linux user for ages, and a KDE user since the mascot was Kandalf. I currently use Kubuntu, Mint, Zentyal, Mythbuntu - Ubuntu based distro's for KDE desktop, Mate desktop, office server, and recording telly programs - around the house. I like Drupal, Zurmo, MythTV, Owncloud, Elgg and a few other server based PHP applications. An Elgg-Zuluru bridge would be pretty cool ...

Well, that is about it for now. With luck, I'll be asking dumb questions about themeing and adding rules for various sports in the near future.

Cheers,

Don
GregS
Site Admin
Posts: 240
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:58 pm

Re: Hello Everybody

Post by GregS »

Welcome, Don!

I'm much more of a technical guy and am not strong on the marketing side, but perhaps the angle you might take when talking to the league is how making it easier for the parents increased the number of teams they had participating?

Franchises are a highly optional feature. They could be used for the schools, as you say, or you could turn them off entirely and probably not suffer any ill effects.

Let me know if and when you have more questions. :-)
dcrobertson01
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:24 am

Re: Hello Everybody

Post by dcrobertson01 »

If I was any good on the marketing side of things, I would be too busy to be working on this :-)
dcrobertson01
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:24 am

Re: Hello Everybody

Post by dcrobertson01 »

The reason I am interested in using franchises is that there are times when teams from a particular school cannot play. My son's school, for example, has the school gala on the same night as the games are played. On that day, all the teams from that school are scheduled to play each other, so the other teams can get games.

It would be useful to be able to contact teams by franchise also.
GregS
Site Admin
Posts: 240
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:58 pm

Re: Hello Everybody

Post by GregS »

I think that your scheduling issue would neither be helped by enabling franchises, nor hindered by disabling them, as they currently stand. Though I suppose that, given only the name of the franchise, the scheduling person could use that to pull up the list of teams and use that to assist them in the required manual schedule adjustments.

It would make contacting people a little easier, though only a little; there's no single page giving all the contact info of all the coaches of all the teams in a franchise. Though that would be a relatively straight-forward addition...
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