Torquay United Fans Forum

Good stuff Louis.

How about profiles/interviews for the players? Fans could submit questions? I'd like to know whether Danny Stevens eats his three weetabix a day! (other wheat based cereals are available).

good news, and great to have some constructive feedback. well done louis.

Warwickgull - don't feel at all bad for starting this thread up, in actual fact I thank you for doing so. TorquayFans.com is here for fans to voice honest opinions and that will not change; it's good that the club do acknowledge these views.

I am just back from meeting with Tim Herbert at Plainmoor this morning to put the points raised by fans on this site to the club. There are many things that go on at the club that I wasn't aware of and I'm sure most on here aren't that Tim showed me today so I am very grateful for him to take time out of his day to explain these and take on board ideas to make the Official Site better.

This topic speaks mainly about the official club shop website - I didn't know until today that the official club shop is franchised out and therefore the club have no control over the website and the running of the shop. This will explain the design of the shop website and time taken to update stock on it.

Another huge point raised by most fans is the updates on official website, Tim showed me the ins and outs of the company software for FL Interactive to run the site from. News bulletins and photos can be updated instantly and Tim will hopefully start to incorporate more images into articles soon. Unfortunately, as it was explained on the official website, player profiles are not updated by the club and have to be centrally updated from the Press Association’s records so that all media companies (ie. Sky, BBC, etc.) all have the same data.
One gripe with the company that run the clubs official site is that any change requests on design aspects (such as logo, new pages, links, etc.) have to be input on their request queue for a tech to update. Baring in mind these requests go into a queue alongside all other league, championship, and premiership clubs - so updates like this depend on how big the work stack queue is for the company. You can all understand how annoying this is for the club as well as us, we aren't the only club facing these problems.

I recommended the use of Twitter more to promote updates on the official website to engage more hits which I think went down well so @InsidePlainmoor should be a good place to keep up-to-date at the club when you're on the go - of course on our Twitter page too @Torquay_Fans

I hope this has explained and answered many questions about the running of the official website and can assure you that Tim is putting the hard work into the site. I will be "spotting" for any improvements / suggestions for the site that needs changing or updating, not many people emailed Tim after he posted asking for suggestions for improving the official website so I ask if you have any suggestions that you let me know on here and I'll compile them and send across. Moving on I really do think that the official website is going to be better than ever.

Thanks again Tim, and I'm here to help.

Louis.

Richinns wrote: I am getting one with 'Rice' on the back!

tufcbrett wrote:The club shop online now have the Keeper shirt on sale. Cant be long untill the home shirt is on there?

I am getting one with 'Rice' on the back!

The club shop online now have the Keeper shirt on sale. Cant be long untill the home shirt is on there?

Tim Herbert did acknowledge my email and I believe there is a genuine desire to improve the OS. Clearly they need a little more time.

Agree with that too Warwickgull. I live miles away from Torquay and often visit the online shop pages (which are poor as is the variety of products for sale on there). I sometimes desperatley want to purchase something but there isn't anything that is really worth it. I would like to see the sponsors logo (SPARKWORLD) on training polo shirts, sweaters, coats etc as it would make them look professional and stylish instead of some boring plain blue polo shirt with a club badge and thats it. So for me, the actual quality and variety of items at the club shop needs vastly improving in order to maximise sales like warwickgull says. Apart from a new home replica shirt ( which is neither advertised or on sale yet for reasons we all know and think is a joke) there is nothing that looks interesting to me and i actually WANT to buy things on a regular basis.

I have to say it is one of the poorest designed website I have ever come across. The "Club Player" sites have poor layout, and seem as though having got clubs to sign up have said stuff it and left them looking pretty crap, with bad page set up etc it looks pretty awful. I tried looking at a few other sites setup, and I like what Sheff Utd have done on the openiing page link (and I only had to click the button once to view the main page, I always have to click twice on TUFC site). Perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree and should be messaging the people who manage/create the sites and tell them to sort out the crap they have created!

I feel a tad bad about starting the thread at all now, it is clear for one reason or another those at the club have tried their best with the site. My main beef was with the clubshop page which is poor and in my opinion costing the club money.

Supporters living miles away from the club generally want to pay for training/leisure gear to support the club, as they cannot get to home games to pay at the turnstile. Merchandise needs to be availiable for all fans and displayed on the website in a professional way to maximise sales.

As mentioned at the top of the thread a perfect example of this would be http://www.ccfcshop.co.uk/

Fantastic responce from the OS by the way.

Yes i agree. It is encouraging to know that people at the club like Andrew take the time to read the more constructive ot critical posts on this forum and take on board what the fans are saying. Also, accepting that any individual may have a better solution to a problem or innovative idea than they do. This is very sensible and can only be good for the club and the fans.

Wubble U wrote:I see the board have quickly moved to explain the situation with the website and are inviting ideas and suggestions for improvement:

http://www.torquayunited.com/page/News/ ... 02,00.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Andrew Candy making an immediate impact ?

Andrew is a member on here and just because he doesn't post doesn't mean he doesn't act on what is read.

Good response from webmaster.

4 years ago i was asked to look at this for the club and saw how tied in they were (only 6 years to go), therefore there is so much the club cannot do because it is covered by the contract.

The PTV system is antiquated and aimed at earning money for them at the minimal amount of cost. Unless you are someone like Chelsea (who have their own PTV site which aint much better) you are gonna get complete rubbish.

The club shop website is outside of this deal but it currently is stuck in no man's land between the club and the shop management (who would like to get it sorted).

Very glad to see a response from the club on the OS about the OS. Obviously shows they're listening to what we think. The idea of a centralised website design for all club makes a lot of sense as i imagine most clubs in league two, and probably league one, do not have the manpower to do it all themselves. That said however, it seems utterly ridiculous thatclubs cannot change player lists and profiles themselves as the article seems to say. Surely the people who know this area best are club officials and those in the know at each individual club, not someone central who probably has little idea who most of the clubs/players involved even are. I know it makes little difference as we the fans know who the squad are and that its completely wrong, but it looks pathetic and shows TUFC to be incompetent, when its not their fault.

Thanks to the O/S for explaining and it is clear that they are listening so hats off for that....the comment about the player\squad changes having to be done centrally by the hosters is a bit staggering though!?! Without going all techy, I would have considered players in a squad to be 'content' rather than 'design', and that the club in question would have the ability to change the 'content' and therefore the players, but not the 'design' ie the general layout and appearance of the site.

This is clearly a result of the overall agreement by the clubs to this hosted system rather than something that the FC have agreed to, but I'm guessing that it was put to the clubs as a nice "don't worry, we'll make all of the changes" type scheme so probably semed like a good deal to them.