General Settings | LeagueAthletics.com Documentation

Category: General Settings

This section is used to enter and update the basics about your organization, such as its full organization and abbreviated names, location, and site preferences.

Organization's Name: This is the actual full or formal name for your organization. This will appear in the title bar at the top of all pages and on many other reports, pages, and emails.
Abbreviation: This is a short name for your organization that will appear on many of the site's web pages. This should be as short as possible so as not to crowd other information. If your full name is made up of several words like "My Town's Youth Sports Association," you might abbreviate it to something like: "MTYSA." If there's a nickname for your club, you might prefer that such as "Hawks."
Meta Description: Use this optional field to enter a "Mission Statement" for your organization. This information will be used to help search engines identify your website. The information you enter here should include full sentences and the keywords you are trying to rank for in search engines.

Information entered here will be applied to your site as the meta description, used to help search engines rank your site more effectively.
Google Site Verification: If you are using Google Webmaster Tools or need to verify the ownership of your domain in order to use Google Apps, you can enter your Google Verification code here. This will be the "content" value provided to you in the google meta tag, not the entire meta tag.

Example: <meta name="google-site-verification" content="Use_This_Value" />

For more information about this process and how to use this view Google's help.
Club ID or US Lacrosse Group ID: If your club uses a unique ID, optionally, you may enter it here. This field is mandatory, for clubs that wish to use our integrated US Lacrosse registration features. If you do not know your US Lacrosse group ID, you should contact US Lacrosse directly for assistance with this ID:

US Lacrosse
410-235-6882 #171
[email protected]
Club Phone Number/Email Address: Enter your club's phone number and email address to help members of your club contact you. When entered, this information will also be available in the black login tab at the top of your site when expanded.
Arbiter Group ID: ArbiterSports.com is a third-party officials assigning software. If your league uses Arbiter to assign referees, umpires, or officials to your games, enter your Arbiter Group ID here and check the box to sync your website schedule with Arbiter after you complete the following steps.
Google Analytics ID: Optionally setup a free Google Analytics account to track how your site is being used and where visitors are coming from. The number entered here will be formatted as "UA-#######-##". Once your GA ID has been entered, it can take up to 48 hours for Google to recognize this and begin capturing data.

Your site also includes it's own analytics tools that can be found by going to Admin > Misc > Site Analytics.
Facebook Page: Enter the direct URL to your Facebook page (eg. http://www.facebook.com/LeagueAthletics). This will populate a Facebook Icon on the login bar at the top of your website.
Twitter Name: Enter your Twitter name here. This should be your Twitter username without the "@" symbol. For example, LA would add "LeagueAthletics." This will populate a Twitter Icon on the login bar at the top of your website.
YouTube Channel: Enter the direct URL to your YouTube Channel (http://youtube.com/LeagueAthletics). This will populate a YouTube Icon on the login bar at the top of your website.
Sport Name: This is the name of the sport your organization plays. For example, "Football" or "Basketball." When entered, sport-specific capabilities are made available to you within the site. If you are a multi-sport organization enter "Multi-sport."
Goal Name: This is the name of the goal for your sport. For example, Hockey would = "Goal," and Baseball would = "Run." These are used in stats and game score sections of the site.
Facility Name: This is the general term used for your facilities. For a Hockey organization, you might enter "Rink."
Child Sites Can Close: If you are a parent league, you can optionally allow child or club websites that are connected to your league to control facilities and close the facilities that they own. When closed by the club, this would cancel events scheduled at that facility and notify everyone who has been affected by the change. The facility on the child site must have the exact same name as the facility on the parent site. The facility must also be listed as a HOME facility on the child site.
Parent Organization(s): This field lists the names of LeagueAthletics.com "Parent" organizations that govern client- or town-level clubs. If your club belongs to a larger organization, you should highlight their name in the list. This will allow you to link your site with theirs and inherit schedules, standings and other information automatically. See Outside League / Parent Team on the "Team Information Form" for information about linking to a Parent League's teams.

Webmaster's Contact Information: Enter information for the "webmaster" or technical contact for your site. This is the person LeagueAthletics.com will attempt to contact regarding the operation or maintenance of your site.

Location: Enter the city and state of your organization.
Country: Select the home country for your site from the drop down list
Date Format: Select the preferred date format from drop down list.
Time Format: You can select from a traditional 12 hour time format or from a 24 hour format (5:00 PM will be displayed as 17:00)
Time Zone: Select the appropriate time zone for your site.
Daylight Savings: Check the box if you would like the site to automatically adjust your time for Daylight Savings.
Currency: Enter the form of currency being used on the site.

Domain Name(s): This is the name that identifies your site on our system. To direct your domain to your LeagueAthletics.com site, you'll need to set your domain's Name Servers to NS1.leagueathletics.com & NS2.leagueathletics.com
Sub-Domains: You can create sub-domains for your site and use them as shortcuts to specific pages. For example, "Registration.Mydomain.org" might point to your registration home page. If you're sending out an email inviting people to register, this is much clearer than our internal address. You could also create shortcuts to team pages like "Yankees.Mydomain.org" or a shortcut to a document like "Rules.Mydomain.org." Note: This feature only works with registered domains.

Page Not Found (404) Error Message: You may create a custom message that will be displayed to visitors looking for a non-existent page using your domain. For example, if you were previously hosting your own website and you had a page that was accessed through www.mydomain.com/mycustompage.htm; once you have pointed your domain's name servers, this page will no longer be available. The message typed in this entry can give visitors instruction on what to do - i.e. "The content that you are looking for is no longer available or has been moved. Please visit our home page at [insert your domain] to find the latest information."

News Page

Checking this box will place your news items on a dedicated news page, under the association home page. News items will not be posted to the homepage, but will be accessible through a homepage news slider, if this option is selected when editing your welcome message . This option provides a sleeker look to the homepage of your website. As news items are added to your dedicated news page, the most recent 8 posts will show in the homepage news slider.

Adding a News Slideshow to Homepage
To add the News Slider to your home page, edit the Welcome Message on your home page or via Admin > Messaging > Welcome Message and select where to include the slider: Top, Below, or None.

Removing the News Page
If you have added a Dedicated News Page to your site and you would like to remove it, follow the steps below:

Go to Admin > Config > General Settings > Features and uncheck the Dedicated News Page option
Go to the homepage of your site and click on the News Page and click Delete in the top right corner of the page.

This will move all of the news items to your homepage, and delete the news page. This will NOT delete your news items.

Site Search

If your domain name has been configured with your website, you'll be able to add a custom site search option to the homepage of your website. This allows members to search your website through Google's custom search for your website, specifically.

Translate Site

Check this option to place translation flags on your website's footer area. If clicked, the site can be translated into different languages.

Zip Code for Weather

The zip code entered here will be uses to determine the local weather forecast. This can be displayed in the right column of your homepage. In the event that your site services several zip codes or a large area, try to using a centralized location zip code.

Forums

This will place a discussion forum area on your site where visitors can post their own messages for view and response by other visitors. This can create a feeling of community and foster two-way communications. Users are required to log in using their email address and a password they select. This helps to ensure that people post messages responsibly. If you do select forums, you will probably need to monitor the resulting discussions. As an administrator, you'll be able to edit or delete anything visitors post. If you don't want to be bothered moderating discussions, you may want to leave this feature turned off. In this case, the Forums choice on the home page will not be visible and visitors will not be able to go there.

Moderator

If you do decide to have discussion forums on your site, you may want to appoint someone as a moderator. That is, someone who will monitor messages for inappropriate or out of control content. Enter the email address of the person(s) you want to moderate the forum in this field. You can enter more than one address by separating them with a comma. Each time a message is posted to the forum, the addressee(s) listed here will receive an emailed copy.

Exchange Page

Your site has an exchange page where visitors can view items for sale, swap or whatever. Visitors can post their own items by filling out a form and entering an emailed password (or key). Like Forums above, this feature has the potential for abuse, although to a much lesser extent. If you do not want an Exchange page on your site, uncheck this feature. This will eliminate the Exchange choice on the home page.

Feedback Page

Your site can have a Feedback page where visitors can send you comments about your organization, your sport, or about the website. Submissions are sent to your site's "Responsible Party(s)" listed on the Security page. If you do not wish to include this feature on your site, you can uncheck this field.

Anonymous Feedback

If you allow visitors to post feedback anonymously without giving their name, phone number or email address, they may feel more inclined to speak their minds. In this way, you may receive enlightening feedback and comments that might otherwise be suppressed. On the other hand, it might also encourage unwanted rants or abusive feedback. By unchecking this feature, visitors will be required to provide their name, phone number and email address before they can submit a feedback form. Otherwise, these are all optional.

Send Feedback to

You can specify an email address to send feedback to when visitors post messages to your site's Feedback page. Feedback will also be sent to the Responsible Parties address(es) listed on the Security page. To specify more than one address, enter them separated by a comma or semicolon.

Master Schedule

If you'd prefer not to include a Master Schedule on your site's home page, you can uncheck this item. The Master Schedule lists all events for all teams, one week at a time.

Team Contacts

Check this box if you would like a list of all team contacts (coaches, assistant coaches, and managers) to appear on your homepage.

Hide Email Addresses

By checking this box, email addresses on the "Contacts", "Team Contacts", "Roster" and "Bulletins" will not be visible to the public. If a visitor to your site wishes to email a member listed on one of those pages, they will be able to click on the email icon next to the member's name, and will fill out an email form for that member. The email address will not be accessible by the visitor. To show the email icon, be sure this member's email address is set to "Public" on their member profile.

Show Nearby Amenities

This feature, if checked, will show amenities in close proximity to your facilities, such as coffee shops, pizza shops, sporting goods stores, and hospitals.

Directions Start Address

Once you have entered a list of facilities, the system will automatically create a Google Maps link. The address entered here will be used as a starting point for driving directions.

Join Email List

This feature will create a new page on your home page, allowing visitors to enter their first and last name, as well as their email address. By doing this, a member record will be created for the visitor and automatically be added to the "Friends" team within your database. The system will also verify that the email address entered is not currently in your site's database, helping to avoid possible duplication.

Edit My Account

This will allow your existing members to sign in and edit their own account information along with that of other members of their family. When checked, the Association menu will have a new choice - "Edit My Account". When clicked by a user, a sign in form will be displayed where members can enter their email address and a password. If they've previously used your online registration system, they would have already been issued a password that they can use to sign in here. Otherwise, they can enter their email address only and the site will email them a new password.

Once signed in, the user will be presented with a page that lists all the registered members of their family. They can click anyone's name to bring up a form and edit their data. Self service member administration saves you and your staff a lot of time and effort. However, this feature does have the potential for mischief. Children cannot log in with their own email address. Only members designated as parents in the database can do this. Members can only change their own information and add new members to their family. They cannot change or modify roster information or anything else in the database.

Lock Member ID

This will prevent members from editing their membership ID number (if applicable) when editing their account.

Lock Birthdays/Grade

This option can be used to specify that after a member's birthday/grade has been entered, it cannot be subsequently modified through the Edit My Account feature or through online registration. Some clubs are concerned that members might manipulate birthdays in order to gain access to certain teams and gain an unfair advantage. Since birthdays theoretically never need to be modified, it shouldn't present a burden to members. This policy can however be frustrating to those who perhaps make a mistake when initially entering birthday information and try to correct it. If you find the birthday locking feature to restrictive, you can uncheck this option.

Note: Birthdays can always be changed by administrators with access to the Members area of the site regardless of the setting here.

Next Member ID

This field is used to specify the next ID number that will be assigned to a new member using the Member Information form. Each time a member is entered into the system this number is assigned to the member and the number is then incremented by 1. Some organizations use serial ID numbers to uniquely identify each of their members. This field allows you to specify a base or starting value for these numbers.

Season, Division & Team Term: Your site's Team tab on the home page has a team selection bar that includes dropdowns for selecting a "Season", "League" (optional) and "Team." You can change any of these terms using this and the two subsequent fields. The terms you enter here will be displayed as the prompts for the dropdowns on the team bar.
League Age as of: This is the default setting for the League Age Calculator tool. This should be set to the cutoff date for a particular playing age. For example, Little League programs calculate the League Age as of April 30th, hence, 4/30 should be entered here.
Schedule Page: Checking this box will show a Schedule and Multi-schedule page from the Team areas on your site.
Calendar Page: Checking this box will show a Calendar page from the Team areas on your site. This should only be un-checked if you are not inputting schedules into the site.
Roster Page: Your site has a Rosters section under the Teams menu where visitors can view rosters for any team in your organization. Even though visitors must enter a password (Team Security) to view the rosters, some organizations may not want the public to view this information. If this is the case, uncheck this feature and the Rosters choice will no longer be visible on the Teams menu.
Results Page: Your site's Team tab includes a results page for all teams. If you'd prefer not to display this page and its menu choice, uncheck this option.
Default Game Duration: This setting allows you to specify how many minutes long a game will be defaulted to when added to the site. When adding games, the duration can of course be adjusted, but this will help default to a predetermined time limit, which may be nice for coaches and managers of teams.
Non-Game Types: Your site's Results page is designed to only include events that are scored. Events like Practices or Tryouts should not clutter up this page. You can use this field to specify what event types should be excluded from the Results page. Words or phrases entered here will cause an event to be excluded if it is found anywhere in the event's Type field. Enter each keyword or phrase separated by a comma.
Email results to: When members enter game results and commentary using the Result Information form, the data can be automatically sent to the email addresses specified in this field. For instance, many organizations send their results to the local newspaper(s) for inclusion in their weekly papers. You might also want to send scores to your association's governing body such as a state or regional organization so they can maintain regional standings. You can enter more than one email address here by separating them with a comma or semicolon.
Little League Pitcher's Report: Based on the 2009 Rule Changes for Little League Pitchers, this setting will allow you to specify which version of the rule your organization is using. You may elect Option 1, Option 2 or Both. For more information on these rule changes, CLICK HERE.
Show Area Teams: Check this box if you would like to show other area sports organizations, hosted by LeagueAthletics.com, on the Multi-schedule page. This can be a helpful tool for parents who have children that play more than one sport.
Show Birthdays: By checking this box, members birthdays will appear on schedules and calendars for your site.

Turning off Game or Practice Reminders
Reminders can be turned off globally for all members and teams by going to Admin > Config > General Settings > Communication and setting these features to "Do Not Send to anyone."

Note: This will turn off reminders that are sent prior to events, this will not turn off Live notifications. Live notifications can be turned off via the Divisions & Teams page.

Game Reminders

LeagueAthletics.com can send automatic game "reminders" via email and text message before a game. These reminders will be sent for all game types not defined as "Practice." You can automatically send reminders to all members involved in the game or you can give your members the option of receiving the reminders, which they will be able to choose during Registration or, if activated, in the "Edit My Account" section.

Emailed reminders are sent 48 hours prior to an event
Text message reminders are sent 2.5 hours prior to an event

Note: These time settings cannot be changed. They are a global system setting defined by LeagueAthletics.com.

Optionally, you can choose to globally turn on or off the email reminder settings. To perform this update, you must first check the box indicating that you would like to "Set/reset all members to" and then select On or Off.

Practice Reminders

LeagueAthletics.com can send automatic practice "reminders," similar to the game reminders, via email before a practice. These reminders will be sent only for event types defined as "Practice". You can automatically send email reminders to all members involved in the practice or you can give your members the option of receiving the reminders, which they will be able to choose during Registration or, if activated, in the "Edit My Account" section.

Emailed reminders are sent 48 hours prior to an event

Note: These time settings cannot be changed. They are a global system setting defined by LeagueAthletics.com.

Optionally, you can choose to globally turn on or off the practice reminder settings. To perform this update, you must first check the box indicating that you would like to "Set/reset all members to" and then select On or Off.

Score Reminders

This setting automatically sends an email to team managers after a game has been played, prompting them to enter their scores into the website. The email will provide the details of the event as well as a link to enter their scores. These will only be sent if all of the following are true:

This option is turned on.
The date of the game was between 1 and 4 days ago.
The division the team plays in is calculating standings.
The game has no score entered.
Managers/Coaches are allowed to enter scores.
The event has not been cancelled.
The event type has not been exlcuded from standings.
The event type is included in the standings calculations, or this field is empty.
The Manager/Coach has not opted out of emails.

Email Footer

This message will be displayed at the bottom of all emails sent using the Email Members tool. Broadcasts of Messages (News Items, Teams Bulletins, etc.), Schedule Change Notifications, Reminders and Text messages will NOT include the Footer.