Active.com Launch

Active and eteamz FAQs

• What is Active?

Millions of active consumers visit Active.com each day to search and register online for events and activities, start online training programs or access nutrition, fitness and training tips. Athletes in every sport receive the site's weekly and monthly newsletters offering local event information and the latest on gear and training.

As one of the Web's most popular resources for active consumers, Active.com offers a one-stop shop for maintaining healthy lifestyles or setting and achieving fitness goals. The site offers an online database of more than 100,000 events and activities in over 50 sports in 5,000 cities nationwide, from 5K runs and marathons to cycling races and triathlons. Finding events is easy and online registration makes participation fast and convenient.

• What is eteamz?

From baseball to badminton, scouting to student unions; eteamz is dedicated to providing the tools and services your group needs to create your Web site. eteamz is the online home to millions of  teams, leagues and organizations.

By providing a convenient build-it-yourself environment, eteamz has been able to empower athletes, coaches, leaders, participants, families, friends and more to connect and communicate online quickly and easily.

Stay connected, locate other groups in your area, or view the latest news, blogs, schedules, scores, and photos.

• Why are the Active and eteamz communities blending together?

As you likely read on the Active Re-Launch page, we've grown a lot together over the last eight years. The Active Network used to only include Active.com, a small online community of triathletes, runners and cyclists. Today, with the help of our team sport enthusiasts at eteamz, we've grown into a community of millions of athletes, coaches, family members and friends who participate in over 80 sports and activities.

We realized it was time for a change. So we spent the last year+ taking a long, hard look at Active.com and eteamz. What products could we improve? What were our best features? What was totally missing that we knew members wanted?

• How do I update my user profile? Will I have to re-submit all my profile information?

Your current profile information will migrate over to the new MyActive and profile features. Click here to read more about the new features.

• Will tips, drills and other informative material still be accessible?

Yes. We will be producing and owning much more content throughout the new site. Tournament and announcement submission and listings will also continue to be available.

There will be a good mix of both user generated and professional content. A new team of managers has been formed, consisting of content, directory, and product managers, etc. We will be growing this team throughout 2007 with content producers, community specialists (to assist with interaction and moderating), etc. Active will be much more than a social network or place to chat on forums.

Future content contributors and “moderators” (across many sports) will include professional athletes, coaches and experts. They are being brought on to help provide advice, good interaction, add more quality and improve the community. This will be a growing group as we move through 2007 and beyond.

eteamz FAQs

• What will remain on eteamz?

eteamz will remain a true product and community of Web sites. eteamz will host site building tools, site finders, spotlight sites, epointz and other Web site community related programs.

• Can I easily get to the community portal from eteamz?

Yes. eteamz will be accessible directly within the new Active.com. In future phases we'll also be bringing eteamz customers many optional tools, providing the ability to incorporate community features within their Web sites (message board posts, news & articles, member profiles, video, etc.)

• I administrate an eteamz site. How do I log into the Admin?

 Click here for login information.

• I’m a member of one or more eteamz sites? How do I log into a site as a member?

Same as you do today.

• Will my eteamz site address change?

No. It will remain the same as today.

• How does someone find my eteamz Web site?

Web sites will be searchable on both eteamz and Active.com

• What happens to my Message Center and the messages I have saved?

The Message Center will be phased out to make room for a more robust messaging system. The current messages that you have saved now will not carry over to the new messaging system.  If you have important messages that you'd like to save, you may want to copy them into a document and save to your computer.

Have another question not answered in this blog? Please leave a comment.

New Message Boards

Our new Dicussion forums (previousy referred to as Message Boards) will provide more features for members and better moderation tools for us. Rest assured all existing posts will migrate to the new boards.
 
Updates:

• All member nicknames (which will now be referred to as Display Names) will be unique.
• Search – basic and advanced (by user, keyword, date, etc)
• Topic watches (receive new message notifications on threads and replies)
• Forum watches (watch entire forum for new posts)
• RSS Feeds (each board will have unique feed)
• More board categories and sub-categories
• Highest rated / top member listings (based on a point system… members get points for good answers, helpful advice, etc)
• Badges can and will be awarded to members = member levels (i.e. novice, pro, etc)
• IP addresses can be tracked as needed and will be used to help moderate content before being published. This should not be looked at as a threatening process, but provide you with a sense of security knowing that you're in a friendly and moderated community. We only had a handful of cases in the past where we needed to permanently ban a member .
• Ability to ban usernames. User can still login and use our tools, but not make posts in the community.
• Notifications will be sent out to members for posts rejected by moderators. Staff will have the ability to accept or reject posts before they go live. This will be included on the new boards and implemented as necessary. We will also be able to moderate IP addresses, allowing anyone from a particular IP to post, but messages are quarantined at first to weed out any "bad" posters associated with the IP.
• Members will be able to rate other member's posts (e.g. “did you find this post helpful?”). This will help you determine credible members in the community (a good way to find new moderators).
• Pending, but highly desired: An "Ignore/hide posts from this user" feature will be on every post, so you ignore (ongoing) posts from specific members.
• A feature to report abuse will be on every post. The difference from now is we can set the removal of content by votes (e.g. if a post is reported 5 times, it can automatically be removed from public view).

                        

New Login Process and Product Administration

1. Q: What does "Upgrade" mean? A: By upgrading your current account to an Active Network User account, you will be able to access multiple accounts and related services through your new Active Network Login credentials. Upgrading will also provide other benefits to you, including improvements in security, privacy and account management. The only actions required to upgrade your account are to supply an email address and a display name.

2. Q: What does “Associate” mean? A: Associating your user accounts allows you to link an existing user account to your upgraded Active Network user account. After associating, continue to log in with your single upgraded user account to access multiple accounts and related services throughout the Active Network.

3. Q: Why would I want to associate a user account to my new, upgraded account? A: By associating your local account to your AUS account, you will be able to take advantage of having a single sign on for all integrated parts of the Active Network (look for the Active Network Login logo). Additionally, your merged accounts will source all information in a single place. You may also choose the skip feature and continue using two separate accounts should you prefer this option.

4. Q What is my “Display” name? A: The display name is how users are identified within The Active Network community for many of its products. It allows for individuality, while also providing another level of security for user privacy.

5. Q: Why is my display name already taken? A: AUS will require unique display names due to the enhanced functionality of the Active Network account. As a result, common display names may be already in use by other users who have upgraded their accounts. Unfortunately, if a user is quite attached to a specific display name already owned by another user, the only recourse is to have them set it apart by an additional symbol or numeral.

6. Q: What happens if I clicked “Skip” but I really wanted to associate this account to my AUS account? A: Once upgraded, your local account is now promoted and associated internally to a new AUS account. The only way to change this is for an administrator to disassociate the local account from the AUS account it currently is attached to and make the new connection manually.

7. Q: I have two Registration Center accounts, can I just merge all the info into one account? A: No, the history is attached to those accounts and can’t be merged. Both will need to be upgraded, but must remain separate.

8. Q: What if I forget my username? A: If you can’t remember what email address you’ve provided for the new username, you must contact customer service or an account manager to do an administrative search for your information

9. Q: What if I forget my password? A. There is a “forgot my password” link on all log in pages. If you follow the directions, a link will be sent allowing you to reset it.

10. Q: How do I update my password? A: Passwords may be updated in the “Account” section of My Active or eteamz.

11. Q: Where can I update my information in my Active.com account? A: Personal information may be edited in the My Active section.

12. Q: Why do I keep getting the “Attention! Invalid login information” message? A: The username and/or password you have provided is incorrect.

13. Q: Is there a character min or max on usernames? A: Max 100 characters, Min one character before @ sign, one character before dot, then two characters.

14. Q: Is there a character min or max on passwords? A: Max 20 characters, Min 6.

15. Q: Is there a character min or max on  display names? A: Max 25 characters, one character minimum.

16. Q: After signing in with my newly upgraded AUS account at Active Giving, why do I have to sign in again at other Active Network sites? A: Because of Active Giving’s location, it recognizes your new Active Network Login, but hasn’t actually been integrated with AUS yet. This will change soon, at which point it will join the ranks of the integrated sites that accept a single Active Network Login. To keep from having to sign in twice, you may sign in to a log in page that is currently part of the Active Network Login community before navigating to Active Giving.

New My Active and Profiles

My Active will be an Active.com member's personal profile and content management tool for everything Active.

• Administrate your private account information (display name, email, password, location).
• Administrate your public profile (avatar, biography, activity interests, why you're here, etc).
• View and manage all your videos, message board posts and comments & ratings.
• Access and administrate Active products: eteamz Web sites, Registration Center, Fundraising Center, Donation Center, ActiveTrainer, ActiveAdvantage, etc.
• View upcoming and past activities (with access to your registration data, receipts and results).
• View and manage your memberships created through Active.com.
• Communicate with other Active.com members with your own secure personal message center.
• Many more features to come in future phases!

My Active administration will be accessible in the upper right of Active.com pages when logged in.

Video Information

Active.com video will provide members and visitors with an interactive video sharing community; providing upload and editing features, viewing (including tags, comments and ratings) and search. We encourage all members and visitors to get involved and share recorded memories and interact with each other.

Comments and Ratings

There will be places to voice more opinionated and direct (but clean) comments versus posting on our community message boards. New user generated comments and ratings (e.g. 1-5 stars) will be associated with much of our professional and user generated content (articles, videos, products, organization, tournament and camp listings, event listings, etc).