Hi Frank,

the explanation is easy, at least for Paris: people here know the service very well. And since I run a lot of Frisbee events here that rely on ffindr, Paris generates quite some page views. The same is true for Erlangen, where Erik uses ffindr as his website of choice to promote his events. In addition, although the Internet is world wide, the value of word of mouth should not be underestimated.

Have a nice day!

Two things in the city stats are odd ones out: Paris (having almost 7 times as much share as the following place) and Erlangen (compare the populations of the cities around it - ER has quite a big share for it's size). The two top contributors are from these cities - could there be a correlation, ie administrative accesses blowing these numbers out of proportion?

Actually they are stated above (the ones of 2006), you might need to turn your head the other way around to get them from down under ;)

What !!! There is no one form Australia looking at this site. Alright, gonna do something about that.

I understood that Ultimate frisbee in Europe is pretty much based around club teams, and that this started with the need for a high level tournament. Anyone know the results from the first year?

Nice article dude, but you forgot to say that the club organizing EUCF08 in Paris is the Ah Ouh Puc! ;-)

Thanks for your reply and all the wishes, Justin! You hit the nail on the head: it's a result of countless hours of work, but I really love it. I'm currently in a very ffindr-ish phase, since the second version demands quite some new knowledge of the ever evolving underlying symfony framework. See you on the field!

Hey Christian,
Self-reflection and celebration is nice, but can't be as fulfilling as congratulations from other people. And, since one else has gotten around to it, I figured I'd be the first commenter to say congratulations on a great first year. I don't think there's anyone who can argue with the fact that you're doing a great job filling a huge gap in Ultimate, and I think we're all excited to see the great work you put into the site in the future - it's obviously the result of a lot of hours of work and a labor of love. Good luck with the 2nd year goal, and we'll have to see if we can get España (and Madrid) a little higher up on those lists!

Justin

Good points. Regarding past tournaments, that's a hot issue. ffindr defines itself also as an archive of past events, an at the moment it's a pretty lousy archive because past events can't be found quickly. Maybe we need to create a proper "archive" page that allows easy search within past events, the current "all in one" solution is definitly not definite.

Regarding the automated subscription, yes and no. Special requests could easily be treated within a text field, the workload would then be shifted to the TD -- and since it's the choice of the TD to use the automated subscription, he could judge if it's worth using it. Another thing: this feature mainly addresses TDs, a player/team wouldn't care where to sign up... but a TD could largely profit from an automated and transparent subscription process (no more hundreds of status mails, no more propriatary web development).

Regarding the inclusion of ffindr data on distant website, yes (as you know ;) I'm working on it. Even better, it works already. It's just not yet as idiot proof as it should be: Little tutorial of how to add ffindr data to a PHP website

The automatic e-mail notification is a great idea, all we need is the e-mail address of the TD when entering a tournament. I'll look into that too, as I will for the "remember me" functionality. Thanks a million for your feedback, Patrick.

I like the idea of links to pictures however the way ffindr is working now is that once a tournament is over it drops of the map. I know you can can find it but you have to know that you can do it.

I am not sure about 'automated subscription process for tournaments'. I think it is cumbersome for you and each tournament has different requests. At Parlee Beach tournament in Canada you have to do something special to show your spirit. At Bar do Peixe we ask shirt size and if you like eggs (plus a million other things). How often do people go to a tournament each year? 2-6 average? I don't think it is a big thing for people to fill in their name etc.. each time. I don't think it is worth the effort on you part.

What I would like to see most is that I can stay logged in. Furthermore making it really easy for webmasters to include listings on their site. For example BULA showing all the Beach Ultimate tournaments. The Portuguese website showing all grass and beach tournaments in Spain and Portugal. I know it is possible. You just have to make it 'idiot proof' so everyone can do it. Me included :-)

Nevertheless, great work!

Patrick

P.S. I am not sure if you already do it, but when someone puts in a tournament on behalf of someone else, an email should be sent to the TD (i.e. the contact person that you have to put in) so he/she knows that the listing is on ffindr and can edit it.

Hi Tom, I do have great taste in development frameworks... though ffindr is running on Symfony and not Rails. I think one can say that Symfony got heavily inspired by Rails: the ease of use and the beautiful MVC structure are almost identical, however Symfony builds on the well proven web language PHP (which does not imply that Ruby won't also become one). Cheers for RSSing this blog, and see you on the next boat!

Hey Christian, Great to see you citing the 37signals book as an influence. Does that mean the site it developed in Rails too? If so you have great taste in development frameworks. Signing up for the RSS with googlereader now.

Tom