CFBPredictions News What's New For 2009?
What's New For 2009?
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There are some new features and small changes you will find around the site for this year. Most of them are minor to help some of the operations go a little smoother and some are what we'd like to think are enhancements. Below is a list of some of the changes for the 2009-10 season.
CFBPoints
One of the biggest changes this year is the addition of CFBPoints, a rewards program that gives points for finishing high in prediction contests, referring others or performing actions on the site. You can read more about how to benefit from this new rewards system here but the main thing this will affect from last year is the Pool contests. You must have CFBPoints in order to access either of the Pool contests. Since it will take a little while to earn the required 10,000 points for an entry, most of the time you will have to purchase them which you can do by clicking "Buy Points" from the user menu. You will have the option to purchase multiple plays at a time so you don't have to go through the transaction process each time you play. The cost per entry is $10 or 10,000 points.
Review your predictions on-site
After submitting a contest entry you will no longer receive a confirmation email but, instead, review your predictions on the site immediately following submission. To review predictions, go to "My Predictions" located on the user menu at the top of the site, select the contest you would like to review and submit a new entry if any changes need to be made before the contest locktime. You can easily review you current predictions for any of the contests by using the submenu on each page.
Profiles
We have added a community component to the site to help people learn more about other members but also to allow users to set their school loyalty one time. You no longer need to select a school loyalty for every single contest entry. Set it one time on your profile. Here's how: Make sure you are logged. From the user menu at the top right of the site, select Profile. From your profile page, look for the submenu in the upper left and select Edit > Update Your Profile. Click the Member Info tab and you can set your school loyalty at the bottom. If you don't know the abbreviation for the school you're looking for, check the School Codes page. This will now show up on any contest you enter and for those with loyalty dilemmas out there you can always change it. :)
Contest lock-times
Starting this season, the contests will lock automatically and become inaccessible at the specified times so you must enter your picks BEFORE that time.
Articles
During the week, we plan on posting news articles from around the web that might help you make predictions. These could be anything from news articles, predictions, rumors, opinions or injury reports. They can be found on the front page and news section of the site. In addition, any member can submit an article to be published in our blog section of the site and earn a generous amount of CFBPoints which will vary depending on quality, relevancy and length. For instance, articles related to the prediction contests or preview/review articles about upcoming or past prediction contests, standings, etc. would be most relevant but any articles related to college sports or our contests are welcome, short or long. You will also earn points each time a different user reads your article! You can write about your predictions or your favorite team, players, coaches or make a power rankings article such as the top ten most underrated teams, for instance. There are no restrictions what to write about other than it must be related to college sports in some way. You can submit, edit and delete your articles from the user menu. To submit a new article, select "My Articles" from the user menu, click the "New Article" button, fill in the title and body of your article(images are welcome), select a category, enter some keywords at the bottom and submit. Don't worry too much about structure and layout, we'll make it look good! You can edit your articles any time by clicking "My Articles" from the user menu and selecting the section Blogs and the category you saved it to. Please allow up to three days for your article to be published but most of the time they will be posted within a day.
Layout
You will notice a little different layout of the site which we hope will make things a little easier to navigate. All of the user related items and login fields can always be found in the upper right part of the site. The main menu has grouped all of the contest pages into one section while the contest results for football and basketball are separated into their own sections. To quickly find results of a contest, you can hover over CFB Results or CBB Results then hover over the week you want to display; the current week will be listed first. Then select the specific contest results you want to view from the popout menu. From there, a submenu will display all of the contests from the current week for quick and easy navigation.
Trophies and medals
In addition to the Winners Wall, we have added a list of trophies and medals you can win by winning the various prediction contests or holding records(coming soon!). On the main menu, hover over Winners Wall and select "Trophies & Medals." From there, you can see how to earn each of the awards and how many members have won them; click on the number to see who holds each award or record. Your personal trophy case can be seen on your profile in the "CFBPoints & Trophies" tab.
RSS Feeds
We have put up some RSS feeds that anyone can subscribe to and receive updates from the site when articles or contests results are posted. Choose a feed for a specific section or the first one called "CFBPredictions.com" to receive a feed covering the entire site.
Those are the bulk of the changes and enhancements you will find around the site this season. If you have comments, suggestions, complaints or notice dead links, errors or awkward looking pages just use the "Contact Us" form on the bottom menu or post a message in the Site Feedback forum and let us know. All feedback is appreciated so we can continue to improve the site. Have a great 2009-10 season and good luck with your predictions!