What Up With The Site?
Several changes and (hopefully) improvements happened on the site recently, some of them pivotal while others were minor. Regardless of their size, let’s sum them up in this lovely blog post:
1. Swag Shop
That’s right! You may recall that on some special occassions (and also during a pretty regular ones), we gave away custom made beer mugs and T-shirts with Starcraft themes. Well, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the two people behind it, Mrs. Katie and Mr. Jack are becoming affiliated with SCV Rush and our site will be the official Interwebz home for their marvelous shop!
Right now, you can check out this pretty ordinary and somewhat limited demonstration of what the two folks can offer. Orders are unfortunately still limited for NA and to go ahead and order, just drop Jack an email on JackTancey@gmail.com.
When this shop listing is actually done, it will have some nice galleries, order buttons, stock information, order forms and so forth - just teasing ya.
2. Ready For Partners!
No, it is not an annoucement of some important staff member marrying another member of the same sex; I’m referring to this page instead. An irresistible combination of a video and text pitch has but one purpose - to convince a corporation from any niche related to 16-40 males that sponsoring eSports is an excellent idea and very much worth the investment.
Of course, when the time comes, we will be relying on you guys to appreciate the sponsorship and help the image of eSports by supporting the brand we will sign a contract with - but don’t worry, you’ll be probably so much blown away in excitment that it will be a no brainer.
3. Site Improvements & Changes
Oh yes, and now let’s have a look at what changed on the site itself in the last month:
I. Tournament & Recent Post sections got swapped
tournaments are a more important section than content and this change enables new visitors to find their feet better when they come to our site for the first time
II. Tournament Bracket Placement
People are sometimes confused as to where they can find the bracket. Let thee not be confused anymore for the bracket shall be always placed on the following places:
- Chat Channel SCVRush (same for all tournaments)
- Stream Chat (@ twitch.tv/scvrush1)
- The Tournament Announcement (on the top, see example)
- SCV Rush frontpage menu -> Events -> Current Bracket
- Team Liquid Thread for the tournament
III. New “Battle Report” Category under Articles
Based on the community feedback, a new category has appeared in the dropdown menu under Articles to help you better find the Battle Reports of EU Plat/Dia tours (sadly, they’re not written for any other kind of tournament, yet) - this is useful especially because the reports always contain the list of VODs from the tournament and you can boast to your friends / chicks you’re a casted semi-progamer. Yay.
IV. Profile Adjustments
- you can add Twitter to your profile (please type only your username, no URLs or @ symbols)
- the About box now accepts paragraphs (i.e. hitting enter to make the text look more nice)
- each profile now displays all articles and posts the user has made (do you like an article from one person? Click on his profile and instantly see the rest of his work)
- if you win a tournament, it will also display in your profile - see Jalkloben’s profile as an example
- some other backyard stuff I can’t tell you about but will make the site administration much, much easier
4. Big Thanks to Evermore
We’ve been struggling to actually find someone to deal with the graphics side of the SCV Rush’s universe - and I’m glad to make it official we did. For example, Evermore is responsible for:
- all logos and thumbnails (tournament logos, article thumbnails, the main logo on the front page… the list is endless)
- Twitch background
- Twitter background
As a way of saying “Thanks dude!”, I’d like to forward you to his TL thread about some wonderful SC2 related wallpapers he made.
5. Incoming?!
We are never satisfied with the level of service we deliver to the regular SC2 folk, be it Bronzie or Maste…rie? Therefore, here’s a list of what you can be eager about within a month or two:
I. Fixed Checkin System
This has been nothing but regrettable. A few weeks ago some nasty bug in our checkin system appeared, getting players deleted from the tournament instead of checking them in. Our programmer has been very busy with his real life (work & school & he’s becoming a chick magnet) so he’s been able to upload a small fix that hasn’t removed the problem entirely. It is our priority and will be dealt with ASAP, be patient please.
II. Bracket System
Although we have nothing but praise for Challonge, it is an external service and the ultimate mission is to provide the entire experience without having to leave our site for anything else - bracket system including. Not only will be the tournament annoucement, registration and bracket merged together and easily found, but we will also enable players to report their own matches in the simplest way possible, thus removing a lot of pressure from the admins - and why is that improvement you ask? Because we will be able to manage much larger events with less manpower!
III. Practice Buddy
Oh yeah, here come the big guns. It’s been announced a long time ago and I’m just making sure you didn’t forget - as a part of the forever free membership on SCV Rush, you’ll be able to enter a search engine made to find players with mutually beneficial training intentions. When completed, you’ll be able to look for users who filled in some of the following criteria:
- Server
- League
- Desired Matchup
- Preferred Practice Time
You’ll find a jerk who will keep insulting you instead of concentrating on the practice? Provide a screenshot and if this behavior is repetitive, he’ll be removed from the engine! And of course, the more people we manage to bring into the engine, the more effective and versatile it will become.
IV. Swag Store - Full Version
As I was saying, the current version of the great Swag Store is only temporary and the full version will include, but will not be limited to:
- Gallery of goods (Mugs, T-shirts, stickers…)
- Number of stuff in stock
- multiple forms of payments
You are also free to comment on the page of the store if you have any questions or just want to congratulate Jack & Katie for their great work.
Thank you for reading!
