It was their youth side that played us. We hit the bar, the post and had a penalty saved in normal time. We equailised with the last kick of normal time and went on to win 1-4 AET

It looks a lot better in Firefox now.

So assuming the live scores work it looks to be a very good improvement imo. It's certainly better than the previous efforts by Sponsor-Link for various UniBond clubs.

I like it.

Not to me it doesn't! Have you tried viewing the League Tables page? I can't even find the tables for Division One!

Or me - or in Safari. Anybody viewing on a Mac?

Just looking at the live scores section (its roughly 4pm) and a lot of games are shown but no scores yet...

just been on at 17:25 and still no live scores up
not doing very well is it ????

Sponsor-Link are a joke. I pointed this out to Witton's (now ex-) Chairman several times last season. They're the Del and Rodney Trotters of Web Design. The problem with websites is that any monkey can claim to be a "web designer" or similar, when actually it's relatively technical to do the job properly. If you were a business, you wouldn't pay an unqualified plumber to plumb your gas boiler in, or an unqualified sparky to do your rewiring, so why do some businesses think that it's a good idea to pay completely unqualified, uncertified people good money to produce utter turds of websites? The sooner the IT profession becomes regulated (trust me, it's in the pipeline, though it may take another 5-10 years), the better.

I think a strongly-worded letter to Henkel's marketing department might be in order...... I'm sure they wouldn't want a product of theirs to be associated with such a shoddy online presence.

The old site was basic, but really very functional - and you're always going to struggle with live scores at our level.

Stu (soon to be a Chartered IT Professional, with several Microsoft Certifications)

Can someone guide me to the fairplay table on the new site?

That pigeon should be arriving from Unibond HQ with score updates any time now...







"Quick, go tell 'em there's been a goal in the NPL challenge cup..."

cant see this live score thing working not in our life time

Well said - agree 100%. The fact that the UniBond were recommending them to clubs on the basis of "what they told us" and not on the basis of an already existing quality online portfolio (their own website http://www.sponsor-link.tv still isn't up and running yet and didn't even exist when the UniBond signed up to them) speaks volumes. They (along I'm afraid with some clubs) have been blinded by science and promises of cash, and not had the sense to check out the track record of who they are dealing with.

We are not an amateur league and should be selecting firms, at least to to do the official site, who are reputable. This just makes us out to be a tinpot operation and quite frankly it is embarassing.

Stu as a chartered IT professional - what do you make of the complete rip off (badly done I might add aswell) of Man Utd's match console on the new UniBond site (and club sites)?

http://mu.tv.manutd.com/default.aspx?aff=63

http://unibondleague.com/nptv/index.php

I'm not chartered yet - just waiting on the last couple of months of required experience hopefully And for the record, I very rarely have anything to do with websites these days (but worked on them for 3 of the past 5 years of my career) - it's too much hassle getting a consistent user experience, and many customers want the earth but expect you to deliver yesterday, for £10 and a bag of bon-bons. And if we could get rid of these cowboys (Sponsor-Link and their Delboy mates), maybe people would realise that a decent, dynamic, functional website costs thousands, not hundreds. I do windows programming mainly now as the pay's better and the customers are more realistic

As for the match console, if it was a "rich media experience" (which it isn't, and United's arguably is) then it would be a good idea - IF it was backed up by fast updates and the information which would make people use it. Also making it look like it wasn't knocked up by some teenager for a school project would be nice, but hey, first things first.

That said, I'd far rather they concentrated on getting the bloody simple stuff right. What would be nice would be a decent mobile site for the new generation of mobile phones, but as they can't sort out a site that works in IE7 and Firefox, I'm guessing that getting them to cater for the plethora of mobile browsers is a long long way off.

It doesn't surprise me that they've ripped Man U's site off. When Man U reserves were playing at Northwich's ground the other year, and Sponsor-Link had just re-done Northwich's site too, they came up with an "Official Website of Manchester United Reserves" (oh really, what about the "Reserves" section on manutd.com?), covered with their advertising in the same shoddy style. As my missus works for a Patent and Trademark Attorney in Manchester, it wasn't hard to find out who Man U's Trademark attorneys were, and after a simple tip-off, the Sponsor-Link "unofficial/official" site mysteriously disappeared a few days later.

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner these cowboys go out of business - the better, and I will happily slag them off to anyone who will listen

Thanks for your views - maybe we should email Man Utd and inform them of the shoddy rip-off of their match console (which you are right though is far superior in that it actually works) and see what happens?!

They took photos and a player profile almost word for word off the Ashton site not too long ago without permission for the Radcliffe site (just plain manners really - ask first) and when I flagged this breach of copyright up on our forum the offending article mysteriously went away. If it was a volunteer run website my attitude would have been different - but they are a commercial organisation and hence were making money out of our work done for nothing.

I read with interest how when Grantham's excellent website was replaced by one of their sites how the original webmaster was forced to close his site down completely, because they kept stealing from it! It is so amateur and like I have said before, embarrassing, almost laughable. Sad thing is, the joke is on us and the UniBond now. I hope to God that those seminars that the UniBond are organising regarding making money for your club don't involve these jokers, but I bet they do...

I'd be interested to know what the arrangement is between the league and sponsor-link.

Are the league paying them to produce the league website or is there something else?

I must say that the new site is very disappointing. Whilst the old one wasn't the prettiest, at least did what you want of a website and gave you all the info you needed. The new one seems very half arsed.

I know that Whitby Town like all the other clubs were asked to join up with sponsor link.

Luckily for us our chairman likes the current incarnation of our site.

It's also disappointing to see the team kits 'online' when they were not supposed to be used 'online'.

I'm not sure what the agreement is regarding payment with the league (I'm sure that there must be some involved), but I do know that clubs get their sites for free (although when I spoke to them they couldn't confirm that this would remain so), with the company taking a sizeable cut of the advertising revenue made from plastering their sites with ads. Essentially they are using the sites as advertising platforms and they sell this by continuously pushing the "commercial" aspect when they speak to clubs.

However it has always been my view that a site is there to provide a service first and foremost, and the commercial side comes second to that. Increasingly it is important to make money from your website if you can, but that isn't and should never be the main reason for it existing.

The other issue is that the League stopped Clubs putting footage from games on what they termed "unapproved 3rd party sites" eg Youtube. If your own site doesn't have the bandwith to put this on then you're forced to use sponsorlink.

Isn't Mark Harris on the Unibond managment committee?

I use firefox and for what it's worth I think the new site is far worse than the old one.