Welcome to USAHockey.com 2.0
The USA Hockey Webmaster training page is available as a training resource for our District, Affiliate, and Association Webmasters to help in the administration of your organization's USAH website. Within these pages are user manuals, recorded video tutorials (webinars), and current information regarding bugs, changes, and upgrades to the web platform.
LATEST ANNOUNCEMENTSJune 25, 2008 - FIREFOX 3.0 RELEASE
The CMS 400 does NOT support the new Firefox 3.0 release. Firefox 3.0 worked in Beta form, however the actual release does not work with our system. Ektron is currently troubleshooting the problem. May 13, 2008 - NEW USER MANUALS ON THE WAY
We are currently working on a rewrite of the online user manuals. We hope to have those posted here sometime in the next several months. The current user manuals are still available on these pages, however portions of them are significantly outdated because of the many changes and updates made to the sytem since its launch in June 2007. May 1, 2008 - THE OLD SITE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE SERVER
The old USA Hockey website is now history. Any URLs pointing to the "edit" location are no longer functional. All information on those pages is now gone. April 30, 2008 - EMS OVERHAUL PART I NOW COMPLETE
We have now completed the initial overhaul of the EMS Tournament Tool. Part I included those items we felt were necessary for the EMS to function acceptably for normal tournament and season administration. We are now working through the list of features we consider to be enhancments, and we hope to have those completed in the next several months. We trust you will see a marked improvement in the EMS since it was launched last June 4. October 31, 2007 - WEBMASTER FAQ UPDATE
Please be sure to keep an eye on our Webmaster FAQ (on the menu to the left). We are posting answers to the most frequently asked questions and issues encountered by our member webmasters.
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USA Hockey organizations, you may be eligible for big savings on software from Microsoft. The Microsoft Open License Charity program allows eligible nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations to acquire multiple software licenses at greatly reduced prices. The program works through a matching funds system, so for example, if an individual or company donates $100 to USA Hockey, USA Hockey receives that $100 donation. Microsoft then matches that donation with a $100 credit that USA Hockey uses to purchase product according to the prices found in the product list (see attachment). If, say, you wanted 20 copies of Office 2007, they are listed at $5 each. Using your $100 credit to purchase, you end up receiving $100 in cash and 20 copies of Office 2007. Below is the link to the Microsoft Open Charity program, as well as the product list detailing the software eligible for matching contributions to 501(c)(3) organizations. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/open/opencharity.mspx Microsoft Product List (pdf)
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We continue to troubleshoot bugs within the system, with some fixes more apparent than others. We are still handling a significant number of support requests, and we continue to solve those problems one-at-a-time, as they come in. We recently held an on-site weekend of Webmaster training for Affiliate Webmasters, and the ovewhelming sentiment was to simplify the system. To that end, many of the "bugs" we are currently working with are geared toward making the system simpler to understand and work with. We have simplified and stabilized the Menu creation and editing process. We have also fixed the "Quicklinks" functionality within the CMS, and you are now able to add files to your folders and link to them using Quicklinks. There have been many premissions-related issues left over from the migration, and we continue to fix those. Each week we see more websites coming into focus, and we appreciate all our Webmasters who have committed their time and patience to this project. We know it hasn't been easy for any of you, but we are encouraged by the progress we see in both the continued improvements to the system and the content going up on your websites. We will continue to post updates to the training site. |
The "Quicklinks" feature in the CMS is now fixed and operational. This means you can now link to internal files within your site folders. Previously, you could create the link, but a bug was causing the link to be interpreted incorrectly in the edited page. This also means you can now link to and display Photo Galleries! |
We have recently designated every Wednesday, 12am midnight ET as the hour-long window for performing maintenance on our site. The good news is that we use this time to push bug fixes live into production, so hopefully your worlds are a little better on Thursday mornings. The bad news is the site is slow to load and sometimes inaccessible during this window of time. We are attempting to limit the maintenance window to this one hour a week, but cannot eliminate it entirely. If you can avoid using the site during this time, you will avoid any unexpected loss of data, or at the very least, turtle-slow load times. |
We continue to provide email updates and instructions as we troubleshoot the new web platform. If you administer a USA Hockey website, and would like to be included on our Webmasters' email list, please email Eddie (eddieo@usahockey.org) to have your address added. |
To all USAHockey.com Webmasters:
As you have now realized, we shook your web worlds a little bit today. We are all operating on the new website as of this morning. Okay, first of all, after three tries, migration was not clean as we had hoped. Most of your content should be in your Content Management folders, but in many cases it's not in the right place and needs to be reformatted. We are very sorry about this and tried three times in order to avoid 1,700 volunteer webmasters from doing this work, but the two systems were too incompatible for the content to migrate cleanly. Second, please hang in there with the new web publishing tool. All of us at USA Hockey were so programmed to using the old tool that it took us a while to understand the new tool. Once we had that "ah-ha" moment, we all agree this is a much better tool to use, and we enjoy creating content in it. YOU CAN START WORKING ON YOUR NEW SITE NOW. YOUR OLD WEBSITE REMAINS ONLINE FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE IN CASE YOU NEED TO CUT AND PASTE CONTENT THAT DID NOT MIGRATE. Please see the navigation to the left and click on "FAQ" for info on accessing the old sites. |
On May 2, we began the intensive process of migrating the content from your old website (Text/Content, News Brief, and photos only) into your new website. This process was complete on approximately May 29. PLEASE REMEMBER, CONTENT ENTERED AFTER MAY 2 WILL NOW HAVE TO BE RE-ENTERED ON THE NEW SITE. Also be aware that ONLY THREE AREAS of your site were migrated: News Brief, Text Content and Photo galleries. If you have other information such as tournment stats or banners and graphics, please save them to a screenshot that you can add later. The old sites are currently in place and accessible at "edit.usahockey.com/<youraliashere>" You may also login to the old site during this time using the old login page. The old sites are in place temporarily to help with content transition, however we have not yet determined when they will come down. |
Since our existing website was nearing its sixth year of use, it could no longer keep pace with our traffic growth, and members were having an increasingly difficult time finding information. We concluded that our members and webmasters needed the most updated publishing tool available, still for free. As part of the transition to the new platform, 1,500 local hockey programs who had built free websites on the old USA Hockey platform had their websites migrated to the new system. And as many of you know, we have experienced some significant difficulties through that migration. We are committed to solving the problems we are currently expereincing, however, and we appreciate everyone's continued patience through this intensive process, as we move forward in our efforts. We are excited about the potential we have already seen and experienced with our new platform. We invite you to take a tour of the new platform. THE NEW SITE OFFERS:
>>>FREE WEBSITE FOR EVERY USAH PROGRAM
>>>ENHANCED LIVE SCORING & STATS TOURNAMENT TOOL
>>>NEW ONLINE LOCAL EVENT MANAGEMENT REGISTRATION
>>>NEW ONLINE EDUCATION & TRAINING WEBSITE RE-LAUNCH PRESENTATIONS:
>>>UPDATED: WEBSITE RE-LAUNCH PROMOTIONAL FLYER (.pdf)
>>>FOR DISTRICTS, AFFILIATES, ASSOCIATIONS (4.2 Mb, .ppt)
>>>2006 ANNUAL CONGRESS PRESENTATION (5.1 Mb, .ppt) |