Automatic publishing to the Internet

With TournamentService you now can put your tournament directly out on the internet! This requires no knowledge of HTML, no account or subscription at any internet service provider, no dedicated (or hired) WEB-editor. A few clicks with the mouse is all you need to do. TournamentService can do all the following for you, fully automated:

CalendarService

As soon as the date for your tournament is set, it's time to publish this to the internet! Why? To get your tournament included on this list.

First you must  create the tournament in TournamentService the usual way. Then, click  Internet – Publish tournament to the internet from the main menu. You will get a screen like the example to the right here. Check (for example) the selection Yes, publish every time I save and then click Update results and signups NOW. That's all! Now the public out there can find your tournament on the calendar.

In the lower part of this screen, you will now see a link highlighted in blue. This is the address ("URL") to your own tournament's homepage on the internet! This address can be used in advertising, web-pages, guestbooks or anywhere you like, to market your tournament. You can click this link right now to see what it looks like, on the internet.

SignupService

TS also makes it easy for you to create a webpage where the players can sign up, online. This is a nice service to your participants, and it also makes the arbiter's job easier. The players does the entire registration work by themselves! No need for the arbiter to manually key in all the player details later on. To create this online-signup, all you need to do is check Yes please under online signup. You may also enter a deadline for signup. After that date/time this online signup is automatically closed. (remember to click the "update" button every time you make changes to make these changes visible on the internet)

Now, your tournament's homepage will have an option ("Signup") where the participants can click, see the example to the right. After entering their personalia, this signup routine will check their name against the public rating list. This gives you their correct FIDE member number, latest rating and other info, and makes it possible to identify the player for rating etc. Is you select so, they will have to confirm their signup via email. (gives you some protection against "jokers" and false signups).

Even though this is both easy and dashing, not all players might want to sign up online. So you can of course also enter players manually, directly intoTournamentService like before. At intervals until tournament start, you should click  "Update...". TS then updates the signed on players both ways: The list in TournamentService will be updated with the players signed up online, and the players you entered manually will be published on the list of players on the webpage.

That way, the internet audience can at any time view the complete and current list of signed-up players as the start date approaches.

InvitationService

It is of course an advantage to "make yourself attractive" for potential participants, in order to draw players to your tournament. A nice invitation is what we need. Even this, TournamentService can help you with! Click edit invitation and you will get a small wordprocessor where TS already have filled in most of the information. You can edit this draft or make something completely different if you want. When you save, this document will also be out there on the home page under the "welcome" menu.

StandingsService

When the tournament starts, starts you will also have an automatic standings service for the public on the internet. Every time you have entered a result in TS and saved the tournament, this information will update the web pages. The internet audience can then click the "results" menu on the homepage (and optionally select group) to view fresh results from their own armchair. (you can of course also opt to select semi-manual updates, i.e. only when you click the update button.)

BulletinService

For an even higer level of service to the internet audience, it is common to write a small report or bulletin for every round.  TS makes this easy also: Check  I also want to publish bulletins and click the button to edit the bulletin. You will be taken to a wordprocessor where you can enter and maintain the latest round reports and other happenings.

SponsorService

A tournament needs financing also. Even this, TournamentService will assist you with! A separate folder tab ("Publish commercials") will be available from this same dialog. From there, you can click the buttons to edit a section of the web-pages where you may insert company logos or other messages from your sponsors. This commercials will be visible in the margin or in the header of the standings- and pairing reports on the internet.

GameService

If you enter the moves of the games into chessbase, chessbase light, PGNtoJS or other tools, TournamentService can also offer game viewing to the internet audience. TS will look for pgn-files in the same folder, and with the same name, as the tournament file. If such a file exists, the standings- and pairing pages will automatically get clickable links which the audience may use to open an online (java-based) game-viewer. The easiest way to get get this right, is to use the buttons on the "publish pgn games" folder. After each round is started, click  Create / update PGN game file, select the file in the list and then click Open/edit PGN game file.The file will open in the pgn-tool you have installed on your machine, ready for you to enter the moves. If you instead need to do this manually, see the paragraph "Working with pgn files" here for more information.

Live games

For the really professional tournaments, it is common to transmit one or more games live to the internet, using pressure-sensitive chessboards. Even this, TournamentService can give you some support for. You must use other tools to establish a webpage with the live games. But you can put a link to this page from the homepage by checking I have published live games on this address and enter the address (URL) in the next field.

Erase / undo publishing

If you for any reason decides to withdraw the tournament from the internet, all you need to do is to check No, this tournament is secret. All information you have published will be removed permanently.

Existing home pages

If your club has a web editor maintaining your own homepages, this TS-generated web page can of course be linked to your club homepage, using a link, frame, iframe or any other method.

Tournament history for your own club

Just by using all this functionality over time, as a bonus you will have created a substantial database of your tournaments. This database can be listed on your own homepages, or perhaps only saved as a favourite link in your web browser. To get such a list use an address similar to this:

http://tournamentservice.com/TournamentList.aspx?SrchOrganiser=Hammerfest%20Sjakklubb

Of course, you replace the organiser's name with your own. Use "%20" instead of spaces. You will also find such a link on the internet.menu inside TournamentService.

Also note, you can have more fun with this tournament calendar, such as finding all tournaments a particular player has played, who won the club tournament two year's ago and how many players usually participates. All this can be answered by searching on the different fields at the bottom of the tournamentlist.

The "Hotlist"

Another "hidden" page is this one: http://tournamentservice.com/upcominghot.aspx. This gives you an overview of the most active tournaments going on right now. It may be used by chess-editors, by including the list (ex) in the margin of your own pages.

Advanced information for WEB-editors

If you are familiar with HTML, and you are making your own web design, you will find some extra information below:

You can link directly to the subpages for signups, invitation, bulletin, games, standings, player details etc. The correct URL can be seen when pointing the different links. A few things are worth mentioning though:

http://tournamentservice.com/TournamentList.aspx?SrchTrnName=tournamentname&SrchOrganiser=ClubName&

SrchPlace=City&SrchLastname=PLayersLastName&SrchFirstname=PlayersFirstName&SrchFed=PlayersFederation

This entire URL must of course be on one line. All the searches are performed using a partial string search (SQL: LIKE %xxx%) and they are case insensitive