Message History

When you receive a new  message from someone, you can now see all the messages that you sent to each other in the past.

For example, let’s say you sent a message to another member a few weeks ago asking him a few questions. Imagine he is only replying now. Do you still remember the questions you asked him? Probably not. With the message history, you will see his reply as well as the original message you sent him.

This should make sending messages on Europlayers more efficient.

Note that when you are replying to someone, there is no need to include the original message as this will be done automatically for you.

Let me know what you think of this new feature.

New success story

Toby Atawo has just sent us his success story (you can read them all by clicking here). Here is what he says:

I would really like to thank Europlayers.com for giving me an opportunity to find a team to play for. The website was my way to contact and establish connections with players agents and coaches. I hope others get a chance to find themselves on a roster too.

Thanks Toby for sending it!

New way of payment for the Premium membership

If you prefer not to use PayPal to pay for your Premium membership, you can now pay by direct bank transfer. When you are on the Payment page, click on ‘Direct Bank Transfer’. Alternatively, go to this page and follow the instructions.

Note that, if you pay by bank transfer, the payment has to be made in Euros for a minimum period of 3 months.

New sports on Europlayers

You might have noticed that there are 2 new sports on Europlayers:

• Rugby League
• Rugby Union

This brings the total to 11:

• American Football
• Baseball
• Basketball
• Football (Soccer)
• Handball
• Ice Hockey
• Lacrosse
• Volleyball
• Water Polo
• Rugby League
• Rugby union

If you know any players, coaches or teams in those sports, you can help us (and them) by telling them about Europlayers. They will simply need to select the sport they are interested in on the ‘Registration’ page.

New feature: players, teams, coaches lists are now sortable

It is now possible to sort the players, teams, coaches and agents lists simply by clicking on the header of the column you want to sort by:

For example if you click on ‘Age’, the players will be sorted by… age:

Hopefully this will make it easier to find other members. This feature was requested by Dwaine Wood.

Registration on Europlayers – Confirmation email not received.

In the past few weeks, some new members have contacted me to let me know they hadn’t received their confirmation email (which is sent automatically) yet. It turned out that the email was received but identified as ’spam’ by their spam filter. If this happens to you, check in your ‘Spam’ folder to see if the email is there. To avoid this problem, you should add our email address (which is listed on the Registration page) to your Contacts list in your mail software.

Also make sure that your email address is correct. If you don’t enter the correct one when you register you will not be able to receive the confirmation email. This is very important.

1 Europlayers’ member interviewed

A friend of mine has just mentionned to me the following article about Craig McIntyre who played for the Parma Panthers team in Italy. He was one of the team’s five Americans in 2006 and one of just two this past season. Craig has been a member of Europlayers since 2005. You can read the full article by clicking here.

Here are some extracts:

Just after his career ended, he [Craig McIntyre] learned of the website europlayers.com after talking with his former Eagle teammate Javid Shoemaker, who was playing in Sweden. After registering his name on the site, McIntyre began corresponding with Papoccia [the Parma Panther's head coach].
His first season, he had about five days to practice with his new team and in new surroundings before his Italian debut. In 2007, he finished his winter quarter classes at EWU, caught a plane and flew to Milan, drove 1 1/2 hours to Parma and then caught a train to Naples where his team was playing the next day.
“It was pretty amazing to be in Cheney and then playing in a game there 24 hours later,” he laughed, adding that he caught three touchdown passes and had more than 100 yards in receptions in that game. “Once I got out there I just felt lucky to be able to play. It’s like riding a bike. That’s what you do.”

As a paid American, he gets paid roughly $2,000 per month for a season that lasts from April-July. In addition, his transportation to and from Italy is paid for, as well as all his living expenses. He shares an apartment with the other Americans, as well as a rental car and cell phone. Membership at a local gym is also part of his compensation.

But because he was one of the only paid players, a lot was expected of him. Besides receiver, he was a running back at times, played as a defensive back and was on all of Parma’s special teams. In six games during the regular season in 2007, McIntyre caught 45 passes for 995 yards and 15 touchdown.

Besides his playing career in Italy, he has fond memories away from the game during his short stints in the country. He has attended two of the biggest wine festivals in the world and visited some renown wineries. But three other events stand out in particular, including his visit to Germany to visit with and watch his former quarterback at EWU, Erik Meyer, play in NFL Europe.

New success story

Nolan Fisher has just sent us his success story:

I got onto this site and within 24 hours i had an agent and was signed to play some arena ball when i thought my career was done….Thanks Again Europlayers.

Thanks for sending it Nolan. If you too have found a team, a player or a coach thanks to Europlayers you can send us your success story which will appear on this page: click here

‘My Network’ is now ‘My Contacts’

Some of you had mentionned to me that ‘My Network’ wasn’t very convenient to use so I decided to remove this feature from Europlayers and replace it by something simpler to use called ‘My Contacts’.

If you recall, to add someone into your ‘Network’ you had to ask for their authorization and only if they accepted the invitation then they would be added to your Network.

I’ve decided to completely change this:

Firstly, I renamed this feature. ‘My Contacts’ makes more sense (it’s a term which is also used by popular messengers such as Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger). I used to be contacted regularly by members wondering what ‘My Network’ was. Since I changed the name about 2 weeks ago, nobody has contacted me to ask me what it was. I guess it means the name is clearer.

Secondly, it’s much easier to use. Simply click on the ‘Add to My Contacts’ link when you receive a message to add the sender into your contact list. I’ve also added a similar link at the top of each profile:

 

To view the list of all your contacts, click on the ‘My Contacts’ link on the left menu:

Hopefully this will help you manage your contacts in a more efficient way.

New feature: ‘messages sent’ box

One feature which had been requested by some members was a new screen to display the messages that you have sent. Until now, it was only possible to see your ‘inbox’ (ie the messages that you have received).

I’ve implemented it this weekend: in the ‘Member Zone’ you can now see ‘Sent Messages’ just under ‘New Messages’ in the left menu. If you click on it, you will see all the messages that you have sent, when you have sent them and when/if they have been read.

Let me know what you think of it or if you have other suggestions to improve the website.