Quick Tournament Overview

Adding in tournaments turned out to be a huge undertaking which involved a few months of hard work. Starting on August 6th GolfStakes.com is going for a live action test of the new features. To give you a taste of what it takes to setup and manage a tournament here is a quick overview.

The Setup

To create a tournament is pretty simple. The only items that you need is a name for the tournament, when it's being played, where it's going to be played at, a starting tee (the options come from the course that you select) and if this is a private tournament and if you will be using the 3-5 rule from the USGA handbook.

Once you create the tournament you can now add players to your tournament.

Simply search for the GolfStakes.com member whom you would like add to your tournament, select if they are a member or a guest and then add them to your player list. What you're doing here is actually creating a bucket to ease the creation of teams and flights.

Creating a team is a simple matter of select which player will play against which player.

Once you have create players, teams and flights you can easily view the tournament details.

Everything is in the details

From the details screen you can drill down and see:

• player details
• details of the teams in tournament
• flight information for the tournament
• and how many rounds are associated with the tournament

The last step of creating a tournament is associating a round with the tournament. The only thing needed for this action is a round name. Once you associate a round, you can now go to the round list page, and see all of  your players grouped together in teams ready to add side games, scoring and printing of score cards.

Wrap up

That's  it for now. Tournaments are a pretty direct path when you're setting one up. Once you have them setup, going out to the course and scoring the tournament should be as simple as playing a normal round. So there you go, have fun and enjoy your next tournament while using GolfStakes.com.

The Duke Gibson Classic

Starting on August 6th, 7th and 8th, GolfStakes.com is going to be used to track and score our very first large scale tournament at the Blue Hills Country Club in Kansas City. The Duke Gibson Classic is an annual event and will for the very first time be scored in real time using GolfStakes.com's new tournament management features.

Player's scores will be tracked during the three day event with daily adjustments made automatically via the GolfStakes.com scoring engine. During each daily round, players and spectators will have the opportunity to watch the action on GolfStakes.com's live leader board.

After several long months of work, we here at GolfStakes.com are excited about bringing the power of GolfStakes.com to a large scale tournament. We look forward to letting you know how the event went and where we'll be going with the tournament management features.

One year with GolfStakes

With over a year of working with GolfStakes.com we've made a lot of major improvements. Three major facelifts of the user interface, the addition of a messaging system, profiles, statistics, 23 different types of side games, and the always upgraded scoring engine. We're looking ahead at some of the great new improvements in store for you.

Our first one is going to be the addition of tournaments. We're planning to roll out the ability to create teams, flights and tournaments integrated with the ability to manage all aspects of the game during a tournament.

The second major upgrade is going to be league setup and management. We know that a lot of you like to play on leagues and this has been a long term goal for us.

So we're doing some heads down coding and cranking out new additions to the site. Come visit GolfStakes.com and see what's new and exciting in the world of online golf scoring.

Your Friends Tab Update

We're always trying to improve the user experience on GolfStakes.com and today I would like to give you a preview of what your 'Friends' tab will look like in the near future.

As you can see from the new layout, we have put some thought in to how this section is going to be used. First we've added a visual avatar to be displayed so that you can quickly see who you are friends with and to be able to find them just by scrolling by. Second, we have your friends screen name displayed in the center of the friends list, with the date and time of their last login underneath. Third; on the right hand side of this section, you can see a link called 'Search for Friends' this will take you to an advanced search page where you can find people you know just by typing in their email address. Four and Five; these are action buttons links that you can do. You can send a message directly to your friend via GolfStakes.com's internal messaging system, or if you no longer want to be associated with this friend, you can quickly remove them from your list.

Last, as you can see, there is a scroll bar that appears to the right of your friends list. When you have more than three friends, you will now be able to quickly scroll through your list.

A few points to notice. The green display name and the avatar picture are all hyperlinks and when clicked will take you to that user's public profile.

That's it for now, we hope that you like what you're seeing and as always if you have any comments please leave them either in our 'Community Forums' or through the GolfStakes 'Contact Us' page.

Your New Inbox

With the way that managing friends has been changed, we felt that there was a need for users to communicate between each other. From this need we've created our new internal messaging service.

When you log in to the site and go either to the 'My Game' tab or the 'My Profile' link you will see on the far right side a new tab called 'Inbox'. Clicking on this tab will take you to an area where you can see sent and received messages and can compose new
messages to send to your friends.

Status Codes

If Sending	Sent	Pending	Invited
If Receiving	Sent	Read	Accepted

Each list of messages generally show the same information except the status will be different between sent and received messages.

Clicking on the subject of any message will take you to the details of that message. Depending on what type of  message you are viewing will determine what type of actions you can take with the message. A new received message will give you the option to mark the message as read. A newly received invitation will allow you to accept the friend invitation and become friends with the sender of the message.

Clicking on the 'Compose Message' link to the far right of the inbox will take you to the the 'Compose Your Message' page.  The form displayed is very simple to use. Clicking on the 'Send To'
link next to the empty text box will bring up your personal contact last (basically the same as your friends list). From this list you can sent one person to receive your message. The contact list box will close an the message now has that person assigned as the receiver of your message.

 
You are now free to add a subject line, and a personal message to this user. When you are done, click the green button called 'Send' will save the message and send an email notification to the recipient. 

That's it for your inbox. We will be adding in more functionality in the future. If you have any feedback for this functionality or any other please feel free to leave use some feedback on our contact us page, or in the GolfStakes forums.

New Friends Tab Functionality

We've made some changes to the way friends are found and added on GolfStakes.com.

First thing is, you have a tab found under the 'My Game' which is called 'Friends'. Under the 'Friends' tab you have a list of all of your current friends. This list will display the current display name of your friend, the last time there were online and gives you a hyperlink to their profile. To the far right you will see two options
for the page. First you can now search for a friend on GolfStakes and second, you can now remove a friend from your Friends List.

Clicking on the 'Search for Friends' link will take you to the Friend Search page still located under the 'Friends' tab. From here we have given you the option of searching for a friend by your friends email address. Type in the address, and click the green 'Find Friend' button. If your search is successful, you will be presented with a display of that users display name, their location, their avatar and two action links; one to add them
as a friend and one to send a message to them.

If you notice, you will see that the display name is bold faced, you can click on this link and be taken to this user's profile page. In addition, you can also click on the avatar and go to the user's profile page also.

Clicking on the 'Add as Friend' link will take you to a page under your inbox where you can now invite this person to be a friend of yours. You can add in a personal message if you wish.
When an invite is accepted, both people are now linked as friends. They will see you, and you will see them. Being a friend means that you can now communicate with each other through the inteneral messaging system found on GolfStakes and that you can now be associated with other players golf rounds. To send the invite, click the green button called 'Send Invitation'.
A user will only be made a friend when the invitation is accepted. Once an invitation has been accepted, both users will be friends of each other.

From the friends search result page, if you click on the 'Send a Message' link, you will be taken to the 'Compose Your Message' page found under your 'Inbox' tab. From here, you will see that the 'Send To' box is already filled out with your recipients display name. You are now free to add a subject line, and a personal message to this user. When you are done, click the green button called 'Send'.

The last thing that can be done under the new 'Friends' tab is to be able to manage your friends list. Clicking on the 'Remove Friends' link will take you a section where you are presented with
a list of your friends with a 'Remove' link next to the name. If you click on the this remove link, the selected friend will be removed from both your friend list, and your friends 'friend list'.

That's it for managing friends. You can now add, remove and communicate with them easily through the GolfStakes user interface. If you have any feedback for this functionality or any other please feel free to leave use some feedback on our contact us page, or in the GolfStakes forums.

Rebroadcast of Radio Show

Kyle had a great time doing the radio show last Saturday. For all of those who missed out on hearing live the first time, the show will be rebroadcast Friday April 3rd on 1140Am and 1160AM at 6pm in the Kansas City metro area.

Tune in to hear Kyle talk about GolfStakes.com!