Lesson 3:  How to Enter Your Ballfield Location

 

Overview:  This Lesson deals with how to create directions and an internet link to your home ball field.  Team schedules will show the name of the ballfield where the game is being played as a clickable link.  When a viewer clicks on the name of the ballfield, he or she will be taken to the Ballfield Location Page for this field.  This particular lesson shows you how to set up your Ballfield Location Page.  This is a very important piece of the Summer Teams Database because many people will come to the site for location information if we do a good job here.  You can help save someone the anguish and aggravation of getting lost on the way to the game or maybe even missing it altogether if they don't know where the field is.

 

It would be greatly appreciated if every Team Reporter would please make sure that directions to their home ballfield are complete and accurate on the website.  If every reporter will do that, we should have good directions to all of the ballfields.

 

1.  To access the ballfield setup page, known as the "Location Editor," go to the Admin Menu and click on "Directions/Fields."

 

2.  This is a screen shot of the Location Editor.  As an example, we are going to fill in information for Seymour Smith field in Omaha.  As with the initial team set up, in most cases I have just created the ballfield by giving it a name and no other information.  So it will be necessary for you to edit your team's home ballfield information as we are doing here to add more info. 

The systems allows for several different methods to provide directions to your field: 

a.  a clickable link to a map such as Mapquest or Google maps (Map URL option),

b.  a graphic image of a map to your field (Map/Field Layout Image option)

c.  Short, textual directions (Short Directions option) and

d.  Longer, more descriptive directions (Directions option).  We will take these one at a time.

Whichever method you are using, the first piece of information that you will need is the street address of your ballfield or the names of the intersecting streets at the nearest intersection.  If you don't know, then you will need to do some digging on the internet or call someone in your program who knows.  In the case of Seymour Smith, the nearest intersection is South 72nd Street and Drexel St. 

3.  Map URL option.  There are several free mapping sites where you can create a link to a map of your ballfield and then insert the link in the Map URL field.  In the following steps, we will look at how to create a link to a Mapquest map that  will appear on your Ballfield Information Page.  The viewer can click on this link to obtain a map of your ballfield location.

4.  Mapquest.  Now that you have the street address or intersection, go to www.mapquest.com and enter that informaiton in the 2nd line as shown to the right.    Then click on Search.  (For intersections, you can either enter it as "South 72nd Street & Drexel St." or "South 72nd Street at Drexel St." 

 

5.  Clicking on "Search" returns a nice looking map of the Seymour Smith area.  (Please be sure to confirm that it is, in fact, the right location.)

6.  To create a link to this map, scroll up and click on  the "Link to this Map" link directly below the blue "Directions" icon in the upper right corner.  

7.  This will create two different kinds of links:  an email link or a web page link.  For our purposes, the best option is to use the email link on the left.  Select the text by left-clicking on it three times.  This will highlight all of the text in blue.  Then right-click and select "copy." 

8.  Then go back to your location editor and paste the link that you copied from Mapquest into the "Map URL" box by left-clicking once in the box and then right-clicking and selecting "paste." 

Then click "Save" on the Location Editor, exit Admin, go to the Website "Directions" link on the Main Menu and select the Seymour Smith map Test the link to be sure that it works.  You can also use Yahoo Maps or Google Maps if you prefer. 

 

9.  Map/Field layout image option.  If you have a graphical image of your ballfield layout, for example, a diagram like a pdf file or photo that shows the location of field in relation to other buildings, you can upload the file (more on this later) and insert the uploaded file name here.  This will cause the map or diagram to be visible on the Ballfield Location Page.
10.  Short Directions option.  Here you can put in a brief description of the ballfield location, such as, "The field is located in the northeasterly corner of Seymour Smith Park, South 72nd St. and Drexel St., Omaha."  I would be sure to mention the address or nearest intersection here.
11.  Directions option.  The Directions box is a large, free form area where you can insert more detailed, longer textual information, such as "Seymour Smith Park is located on South 72nd St. approximately 2 miles south of the I-80 / 72nd Street exit on the east side of the street between Q and Harrison Streets.  From the north, take a left at light at the top of the hill at Drexel, follow the park road downhill and to your left (northeast) until you come to a large parking lot.  The field will be on your left."

The "Directions" box also allows for the use of html code.
12.  When you are done adding your links and directions, exit Admin, go to the Website and confirm that you map link and directions are working properly.   You are not limited to just one of the above options; you may use any combination of the above.

 

End of  Lesson Three

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