Creating a Play Cricket Site

Creating a Play Cricket Site Creating a play-cricket club website and setting it up to use with the Warwickshire Cricket League is quick and easy. You need to be registered to Play Cricket as a user You then need to claim your Play Cricket Site You need to set up the teams you have You need to set up a Members Data Base and add your player to your site There are than many other things you can do with Play Cricket and these are described in the ECB guide.

Step 1 - Registering as a user to Play Cricket If you are not already a Play cricket user start by visiting the Play-Cricket home www.playcricket.com and clicking on the Register button at the top of the page.

Complete the Registration Form

Input the required details, and create your username and password. Just follow the on-screen instructions. Beware of the check boxes which ask if you want to receive information from the ECB and third parties, personal choice but I tend not to want these. Make sure you set the check boxes to yes that you have read the terms and conditions and read the privacy statement. Press the SEND FORM button at the bottom of the page. Congratulations you are a Play-Cricket User

Step 2 - Claiming your Club Site Once you have registered, you can then create your site. Go Play-Cricket home www.playcricket.com, type in your new username and password you set up in Step 1 and click the Sign in button. This is located just above the Registration button you used in Step 1, so take a look at the previous section if you have difficulty finding it. Once signed in the top part of the screen should look like this. You can tell you are logged in because your name now appears on the right hand side On the left hand side is Directory Search. Select Clubs in the top box, Warwickshire in the second box, and enter the first letter (or first few letters of your club name) in the 3 rd box, then press the search option.

You will than see this screen Hopefully, you will see your club listed here. On the example below you can see Oakfiled CC who have claimed their site as next to it you can see (map)(contact)(homepage). Below that is Offchurch CC with unclaimed, this shows the site is available but not in use. If you are setting up a site for the first time in should look like the Offchurch entry. To apply for the site click on apply for your site

Note - If your club is not on the list at all, then contact Gm@warcl.org. The club needs to be affiliated to ECB through the local County Board before a free site can be set up for them to claim, and for some reason your club is not recorded as affiliated. If your site looks like Oakfield, someone has already claimed it!. If this is not someone in your club then again refer to Gm@warcl.org. Assuming you have got this far and just pressed the apply for your site link you will see the screen below. Click the box next to your club and press the Pick button

You will then be asked to complete some details about your club. Complete these

Once complete check the box comfirming you have read the terms and conditions and then press the submit button. You now own the club site, the site is active and you are the administrator. Your club will now have it s own Home page on Play Cricket. You are now ready to set up your membership and register them to the Warwcikshire Cricket League. You may also want to customise your web site and start using some of the other features of Play cricket. These are not covered here but there is a play crciket Play-cricket Club Websites An Administrator s Guide. This can be accessed thru the administration system or via this direct link http://yaf.play-cricket.com/default.aspx?g=forum

Step 3 - Adding a team To continue setting up your site and to add teams and members you need to be in the admin system for your club. Go to your Clubs new home page. Note in this example it is hunningham.play-cricket.com. For your club substitute hunningham for your clubs name. You need to be in your clubs Play Cricket site at this point... not the main play cricket home page. If you forget your clubs play cricket web site name then you can search for your club. Follow the process in the previosu section to search the directory for your club abd click on the home page link.

Login to your club site by completing the username and password on the club home page and pressing the sign in button The screen will change to and indicate you are logged in, then press the Admin Button

You will then see the Admin Home page. This is the administrator s first point of contact with this side of the system. The most noticeable difference is the colour scheme, which is always black and white. The menu options down the left hand side also differ somewhat, and there are no menu bar options, advertisements or tickers. This page gives you useful information like the site id, which you need if you are corresponding with the play-cricket help-desk. It also will alert you if there have been any applications for membership of the site, or new postings and photographs submitted, so that you can deal with them promptly. Your Club name appear in the top right hand corner. Your first task is to set up teams. On the left hand side click on Teams

This page allows you to create and manage your club s different teams. When you create your site, play-cricket automatically attempts to link it to the League site, so when you come to first look at this page, your existing League teams might be displayed. If they are not you can add them and any other teams you run, for instance Sunday friendly teams, midweek teams, junior teams. To the left of the teams in the list is an Order dropdown; you can set the order in which the teams are displayed on your site by setting these in the desired sequence and then clicking the Reorder button. You Add a new team by clicking on the link at the top of the page Complete the details for that team and press Save Team Add a 1 st XI, 2 nd XI and any other teams you have in the Warwickshire League if these do not already appear.

Step 4 - Adding Players to your Club From the Admin system Home Page see previous section, Click on Club members and then members database. Club Members This section allows the site administrator to manage the membership of the site. Using the options in the sub-menu, he can add and delete members, and assign them roles within the site, create groups of members and use the system to email them. He can, if he already has a database of members, upload that to the site to get everyone on the site in one go, and similarly download the site members to his own computer to use in other programs. Member Database The member database is the heart of your site; it allows you to control which members have access to sensitive areas of the site, to grant rights to update the site to certain members, and to add and amend information about your members. The top section allows you to search the list by a number of different variables; this may be just to find an individual quickly, or you may wish to tailor the list displayed in order to send everyone on it an email message, a link for which is provided below the search boxes. The main section lists everyone who satisfies the search criteria in the boxes. This list is scrollable via the links at the top of the list. The member s details can be edited by clicking on their name in the list; their personal details, registration details and player profile are all editable, and details of their different roles on the site are listed.

To the right of each member s name are their email address (if one is provided), and their telephone number, plus two icons. By clicking on the email address, you can quickly send an email to that member. The first of these icons, a red and blue circle, allows the administrator to remove any duplication in the list. It may be that he has loaded all the players in his own database onto the site, and some players in that database were already site members. By matching them, the two records are merged so that information is not lost. It is always preferable to match member records rather than delete them. When the icon is clicked, a list of possible matches is displayed, and the administrator can choose whether or not to match this record with one of the names on that list. The second icon, a mortarboard, allows the administrator to assign various roles within the site to the user. When this is clicked, the potential roles are displayed by category (e.g. squad player, official position, email group, website role), and the administrator can activate or deactivate that role for the user. These roles can then be used within searches to limit the list for emailing, or in the case of website roles to give the user administration access so that he can update the site himself. To add a member click the link create new user with Members of Web site Role

Fill in the form and press the Add User Button If you have many members to add however the ECB provide a data base upload feature to add members at the same time. On the left hand side of the screen click on the link Mass Database Upload

You will then see this screen. Right click to download a spreadsheet here. Complete the spreadsheet which then down loads with one line for each player and file it on your hard disk. Then click on the link to upload the completed sheet The next screen asks you to specify the spreadsheet to upload. Complete the filed on this screen and press Upload. If you leave the spreadsheet name blank, when you press the Upload button a new window will appear and you can use the browse button to locate the spreadsheet saved on your hard disk

At this point you have a play cricket site set up with the basics and ready for when you need to register your players with the Warwickshire Cricket League. You may at this time want to take a look at the options you can assign to members. The best way to access these is to go back to the administration home page and select on the left hand side Club Members and Members database. Against each member listed will have a mortarboard nest to the name, click on the mortarboard.

You will then get a full profile for each user Here you can assign roles to the club member. Take a look at Squad Players which enables players to be assigned to one of more Squads from which you then choose your teams each week. Feel free to allocate players to squads now if you wish. Also take a look at League Registered Players. Here is where you will go to request a registration to the league, once the registration process is open. There will be more about this is a future guide