Austadiums Website Updates

Anything relating to the Austadiums website such as feedback, ideas & site updates.
Post Reply
User avatar
austadiums
Site Admin
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 5:26 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Austadiums Website Updates

Post by austadiums »

This thread will announce new features released on the Austadiums website. If you have any ideas for the site, feel free to post them here or get in contact with us.

Austadiums adapts for sports during pandemic

2020 has brought many unprecedented challenges and the sporting landscape has never looked so different. The Austadiums website has continued to evolve during this period to remain a step ahead.

Read on to see how we’ve dealt with changing sports fixtures, including cancelled/postponed events and events played behind closed doors (and now restricted capacity), as well as ongoing overhaul of the site, which recently hit an exciting milestone.

As well as being the number one source for stadium info, Austadiums is also the number one source for sports fixtures – listing all the events that matter in one place along with venue info, seating maps, tickets and much more – and until March 2020, things were simple: an event was scheduled, fans turned up, and the match was played and won (or drawn).

As the carpet was pulled from under feet of Australia’s sporting landscape, a number of changes were quickly made on Austadiums to help sports fans understand what was happening.

Tags were added to events – P for postponed and C for cancelled – both in event listings and also on individual event pages. Events played behind closed doors were marked as ‘Event closed to public’ where the ticket link would usually appear, and following the event, ‘Closed Event’ would display instead of the crowd figure.

As time progressed and events were rescheduled, fixtures were continually updated on the site and when crowds were allowed back in, albeit at reduced capacity, ticket links returned but these events are marked as ‘Restricted capacity’ next to the crowd figure, also to ensure we recognise this in the future when undertaking further crowd attendance analysis.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to fast-track some ongoing improvements to the site and introduce some great new features which are now available.

The site is now fully-responsive, meaning you’ll see the same website if you access it from a desktop/laptop, tablet or mobile device. In short, you now get a heap more features when accessing it from your mobile (which most people use to visit the site). The former mobile site is still available via the Austadiums Mobile Web App, which can be installed on iOS or Android devices, and is now dedicated as an App (with further changes to come).

As part of making the site responsive, it has essentially been completely re-done, throwing out the old code from years ago and bringing in the new. The result is a much faster site for our visitors and an improved experience for all. The responsive project was a big one, particularly in the stadiums and sports sections – check them out including the new sub-navigation.

The final piece of the jigsaw was last week when the first version of the new homepage launched. It’s cleaner and features a sports events carousel across the top. The homepage will continue to evolve so stay tuned.

We also introduced the new sports fixture page which has proved to be hugely popular. Previously, you could only view simple lists of upcoming and recent events either by sport or stadium. You can now browse full fixtures for all the major sports leagues right back to 2003 and click through to get the event info, including results and attendances. See the AFL Fixture here.

We’ve also improved the photos page within each stadium (1300+ images available), re-introduced the contribute hub, upgraded the forum, enhanced sports news, made some big improvements to the ‘back-end’ and admin of the site, and not to mention added and updated a heap of stadium listings – there are now 529 stadiums listed on the site!

While traffic was lean when sport came to a grinding halt, the events have returned, fans are now back in stadiums and as a result, traffic is again booming on Austadiums and engagement is at an all-time high.

We’d love to hear your feedback – tell us what you love, hate or would like to see in the future – contact the Austadiums team at www.austadiums.com/contact

Read this article on the CV Media website: https://www.cvmedia.com.au/2020/08/aust ... -pandemic/

User avatar
austadiums
Site Admin
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 5:26 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Austadiums Website Updates

Post by austadiums »

We've made heaps of improvements to the Austadiums site in 2020, some of which were covered in the release above. Lots of new features for our site visitors and many big improves 'under the hood'. Some of the highlights include:

- Site is now fully responsive: You now see the same full-featured site whether on a mobile device, tablet or laptop. Every section & page has been given a makeover - check out the new-look sports pages, stadium pages, news pages etc. You can install our web app by visiting app.austadiums.com from Safari on your iOS mobile device.

- New Homepage: A new-look entrance to Austadiums. Clean & crisp. View upcoming sports events on the event bar, view latest news, a summary of our stadium listings, list of trending stadiums + more.

- Sports Fixtures: view sports fixtures and results round-by-round right back to 2003. Eg: www.austadiums.com/sport/comp/afl/fixture

- Tickets Hub: View & buy tickets for upcoming events conveniently in one place: www.austadiums.com/sport/tickets

- Contribute Hub: Great to have this popular section back. Once again, you can send us news articles, stadium updates and sports attendance figures. www.austadiums.com/contribute

- Stadium Photos: There is now a photos page for every stadium which displays every photo we have, from current to historic photos. Simply hit the photos button on the stadium sub-navigation. Eg: www.austadiums.com/stadiums/mcg/photos

We have more exciting new features planned coming soon also. What would you like to see? Let us know!

User avatar
austadiums
Site Admin
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 5:26 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Austadiums Website Updates

Post by austadiums »

We're excited to recently launch this new feature - view every stadium on a map, allowing you to find venues by their location. While we've always had individual stadium maps, we now list all of them on a single map. You can then click on a stadium to see what it is and click through to view its page. We also hope to introduce a few new options and features to this in the near future to make it even better, including filtering.

Image

Check it out: https://www.austadiums.com/stadiums/map

We've had a HUGE update of stadiums over the past few months also, and have made a point of updating stadiums that previously had little or no info. The database stands at 533, and counting. (View the stats how how many stadiums we have listed, and where, on the new-look homepage). Additionally, check out the new pages for proposed + rejected stadiums. Also, former stadiums are now listed in the primary stadium database.

Visit: www.austadiums.com/stadiums

User avatar
austadiums
Site Admin
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 5:26 pm
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Austadiums Website Updates

Post by austadiums »

We deployed a pretty significant improvement to Austadiums during the week. Insignificant for some, but we're pretty exciting by it :D - friendly URL's. They'll make finding pages easier, making direct access to pages easier, understanding where you are on the site easier, and so on. This is across the whole site, including stadiums, sport and news. A few examples below:

MCG: was austadiums.com/stadiums/stadiums.php?id=71, now www.austadiums.com/stadiums/mcg
Rugby League: was austadiums.com/sport/sport.php?sid=2, now www.austadiums.com/sport/rugby-league

We knew we'd have some short term pain with broken links, but we're reasonably confident these have all been fixed now.

We also introduced new City pages, which display stadiums, a map, upcoming events and recent results for cities across Australia and New Zealand. For example, have a look at www.austadiums.com/city/sydney and for a full list of cities, go to www.austadiums.com/city

Post Reply