Offaly GAA Website - Reform Needed

[GreatDayForTheParish]

The La na gClub thread would appear to have gone a bit off topic. Thus, for the sake of clarity I thought it would be correct to gather and publish our opinions in a correctly titled thread. After all, you never know who is reading this site and if we all display our claims and ideas clearly enough then perhaps somebody at the county board will get the message.

To describe in detail the current Offaly GAA website is to give it time is doesn't deserve. I would like to think that I'm not prone to exaggeration, so when I say that every facet of that site is bad, I genuinely mean it. It's old, never updated, poor format, no historical information, difficult to navigate, the list goes on and on.
A completely new site needs to be launched, not merely an update of the present version. For the development and promotion of Offaly GAA this an essential task.
The newly launched Waterford GAA website (http://www.waterfordgaa.com) is a decent place to start for anyone looking for ideas on how it can be done. Even that website could be improved upon so by no means should it be taken as the authority on the subject.

The views and suggestions of Bracknaghboy over on the La na gClub thread are, I believe, a good way to get this discussion started:

bracknaghboy wrote:
''To be honest I can live with the odd spelling error. What the Offaly GAA site needs is as follows:
1.) Up to date fixtures list for the county teams (of all grades).
2.) Accurate club fixtures at leat 2 weeks in advance of games and if time, venue date etc be changed then the website needs to be ammended to reflect this. Results and tables should be updated after a days fixtures.
3.) There should be decent reports on the Offaly games that take place.
4.) It would be no harm to have a pic and profile of each of the county panel members.
5.) We need an online shop where everything from biros to thongs with the Offaly crest on them can be purchased.
6.) Information and directions on how to get to O'Connor Park and eventually directions to every club ground.
7.) A proper advertising section that would allow Hotels, B & B's, sports shops etc to promote their business.
At the end of the day with any website you have to put it together so that a person with little familiarity of the subject can easily navigate. If an American saw Offaly play and decided to read up on them or follow their progress can you imagine their confusion if they logged onto the current Offaly site.
They can use any of the current Rugby sites as a guide to how it should be done. The current Offaly site has links to the championship results from 2005 and 2007 but no mention of 2008. The whole thing needs to be designed again from scratch.''

[Lone Shark]

Before we get carried away here, I'd just like to point out that I had cause to deal with a lot of these sites in the past, and while I don't think for a minute that the Offaly website is perfect, neither is it awful, at least not relative to the general standard. I used to price up county championships from all over Ireland and the Offaly website, while it wasn't particularly attractive, was a lot better about communicating the basic information than many others. Trying to find fixtures in places like Westmeath, Wexford, Galway, Clare, Limerick, and many others was a real nightmare - at least the Offaly version tended to have the throw in times right.

Of course there are a lot of things that could be done - however the trick is to get to the real cause of the problem. To take Bracknaghboy's points....

1.) Up to date fixtures list for the county teams (of all grades).
2.) Accurate club fixtures at leat 2 weeks in advance of games and if time, venue date etc be changed then the website needs to be ammended to reflect this. Results and tables should be updated after a days fixtures.

To take these two together - is the problem that the fixture list isn't correctly portrayed on site, or is the problem that the fixture list is a hotch potch itself, subject to changes from all angles and completely ad hoc from one week to the next? Things like venues and times are important, but how many times is the problem that the clubs are changing it all by themselves? I remember one round of league games last year when out of five division one ties, not one of them went off where and when it was supposed to in ANY of the advertised lists. The problem here is clubs taking liberties and no clear effort to communicate these back to the public through ANY channel whatsoever.

3.) There should be decent reports on the Offaly games that take place.

This would require either a paid journalist, (Can I apply??) or else a link with one of the local papers - asking them to give away their content. I'm not sure what they'd ask for in return.

4.) It would be no harm to have a pic and profile of each of the county panel members.

True, it would take a bit of organising but it should be do-able.

5.) We need an online shop where everything from biros to thongs with the Offaly crest on them can be purchased.

Now we're getting into it. I firmly believe in this, however this is a substantial project where you can do things like take credit cards online. I think there is a world of money to be made at this, however it would take real work. Even stuff like old programmes - people would pay for those I think.

6.) Information and directions on how to get to O'Connor Park and eventually directions to every club ground.

Definitely - though this would require the clubs to get their bit done. A simple rule like no championship fixtures for any club that doesn't supply decent directions would suffice.

7.) A proper advertising section that would allow Hotels, B & B's, sports shops etc to promote their business.

Certainly. Linked from the proper spots, this could do really well.


I'd add plenty more to that list as well, mainly in the shopping section, but also areas that clubs can access to post up their notes, much more info from underage development squads (where to see games etc.) and even stuff like how to get involved. A lot of people have moved to Offaly in recent years from Dublin or other places where maybe GAA wasn't as big before. Suddenly their kids are going to school in Walsh Island or Rhode and the parents want to know how to get involved with the club or to help out - contact details like that would be useful.

Some kind of subpage giving credit to sponsors of both Offaly and the O'Connor Park project would be great too - though in fairness there is a lot of work being done in this regard.

[Plain of the Herbs]

To be fair, and to use a practical example, the venue change for the Lusmagh/Coolderry match WAS made on the site's fixture list.

2.) Accurate club fixtures at leat 2 weeks in advance of games and if time, venue date etc be changed then the website needs to be ammended to reflect this. Results and tables should be updated after a days fixtures.

[Treasurer]

No doubt there's lots of room for improvement but just on the fixtures/results - as said already, clubs changing league fixtures willy-nilly is a big part of the reason fixtures are often inaccurate. There's a very good results system in place where secretaries text the score in and it's automatically updated on the site immediately it's sent in. But it doesn't seem to happen in a lot of instances.