Account security is important to GotSoccer. We have implemented a new password strength policy for organization accounts. Club or sub users will be presented with the password change form at their next login. This has been upgraded to test the password strength as it is typed and to validate the password when saved. The passwords will then be encrypted and log the date it was last changed.

New passwords must be a minimum of six characters long and may not contain spaces. The minimum password strength for organizations/clubs is level 2 which requires a combination of letters and numbers, or upper and lower case.

The new password strength policy is measured on a scale of Level 0 to Level 4

• Level 0 = Invalid (does not meet minimum length or contains spaces)
• Level 1 = Poor (short lowercase text)
• Level 2 = Weak (upper+lowercase or letters and numbers)
• Level 3 = Strong (letters, numbers, and symbols, or upper and lowercase and numbers, or upper and lowercase and symbols)
• Level 4 = Best (combination of letters, numbers, symbols, and upper and lowercase)

As part of this change we have also created a Change Password Form for sub users to set their own password. Previously only club logins with full access to the users list could change a sub user password.

2012 GotSoccer NSCAA booth

While at the convention, GotSoccer hosted a Tournament Director Meeting for Tournament Directors to network with colleagues and share best practices. This gave GotSoccer an opportunity to show off GotSoccer Mobile. This innovative tool puts the game in the palm of your hands. Directors can now enter scores from their smartphones, referees can view rosters and game cards and issue red and yellow cards; and college coaches can pull player info and schedules. What's not to love?

You can link to your tournaments, registration, teams, scores and schedule, and much more with a few simple clicks.Competitors charge up to $6,000 for website design and hosting; GotSoccer offers the service for less than half the price.For more information, click here

Ruud Dokter of the KNVB presents the development of the game in Holland

It wasn't all work and no play. The three day summit kicked off with an oceanfront cocktail reception hosted by Disney's Wide World of Sports. Coaches enjoyed sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-seventies, their shorts and t-shirts saw the light of day for the first time in months.

Labor Day weekend certainly was a busy one and we look forward to continued high traffic from now through the holidays.

We at GotSoccer.com want to thank you for helping us reach this new milestone, we couldn't have done it without you!

Idaho Youth Soccer's Craig Warner and Amy Goller with GotSoccer's Bill Cameron

They spent two long days with Bill Cameron getting in-depth training. It was tough getting here, though - their plane from Boise on Sunday night was late arriving in Charlotte so they missed their connection to Jacksonville, the nearest airport to Neptune Beach and had to spend the night in North Carolina. We made up for lost time with two very long sessions, though.

GotSoccer's Aaron Wilmoth installing more RAM on our servers

GotSoccer runs on seven state-of-the-art IBM servers which we house at a Jacksonville data center and back-up nightly to two off-site machines. Most importantly, though, we've budgeted a considerable sum of money to purchase two new and even more powerful servers that should allow us to handle our unprecedented growth.

Louisiana Soccer staff members Stacie Schneider and Valerie Clouatre with GotSoccer's William Cameron in New Orleans

William spent time with the Louisiana staff assisting clubs as the state transitions to GotSoccer.

He's not even had time to unpack as he moves to Neptune Beach, where he will be working out of the GotSoccer headquarters as of Monday.

From left: Bill Cameron, Michael Darr, Gavin Owen-Thomas, Gayle Smith, Kathy Schimmel

She said she thought she knew it all but was astonished how much more there was to the software.

Arkansas is just the latest GotSoccer client to undergo the two-day intensive training session in Florida. Since January Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Eastern Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Colorado have come to Neptune Beach.

CJSA President Kathy Zolad with the state's DOC, Shaun Bailey

Today at the Region One championship in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Connecticut Junior Soccer president Kathy Zolad gave us the go ahead to announce our partnership.

We're very happy to have CJSA officially onboard, even though the state has been using our scheduling and registration tools for the last 12 months for all state-run tournaments and leagues, as well as ODP and camps.

This brings the official count of state associations using GotSoccer to 24, with Tennessee and Arizona relying on us for all their scheduling needs.

The new technology allows easier search functionality, and it's extremely easy on the eye. It's just like reading a book!

It's going to take a few days to convert all support manuals to the new 3D format, but there are a few already online. Here's a link to the Tournament Director's manual

Jared came back with a big (and rather strange) champions trophy.

The Beach Blast is probably the largest beach tournament in the country, with almost 1,000 teams playing short-sided games on the New Jersey sand.

Jared assures us his success had nothing to do with the fact the Beach Blast has been a GotSoccer client since 2004.

Our traffic numbers this year are staggering. It's only halfway through the year and already we've received 11 million visits and over 100 million page views. We expect to get over 225 million page views by years end. These numbers dwarf those of any other US web soccer site.

Missouri Youth Soccer President Kelly Ross (left) alongside the state Executive Director Jake Griesenauer

It's a great opportunity to meet with our state clients. Six of the states in the Region either use the full GotSoccer package or rely on our tournament and league scheduling.

With one more Regional event to go - Region One in Lancaster, PSA next week, Gavin is rueing the fact he doesn't have a golf-cart of his own!

Ric Marion New Hampshire Soccer

In New Hampshire, Bill Cameron met with new state president Bob Wiley. He also worked closely with executive director Ric Marion before conducting a training session with a number of club administrators.

Bill was delighted with the session. "It's the first time we really got the opportunity to work with all the clubs in New Hampshire. And with Bob just taking office it was an opportunity to get him up to speed on GotSoccer. New Hampshire will probably be making a couple changes to the way the state operates to take advantage of some of the features the software offers.

Both Maine and new Hampshire are entering their second year with GotSoccer. New Hampshire moved to the platform when their software provider at the time pulled out of the state management market, and for the initial months GotSoccer was providing emergency support. Now the transition can go into full effect.

Craig Warner Idaho Youth Soccer's Executive Director

"We're very fortunate to have such a wonderful set of fields in our midst," he says "and to make matters better the weather's been very kind to us."

Summer came late this year, but just in time for the Regionals

Next week Gavin is off to Appleton, Wisconsin for the Region 2 Regionals.

As Bill points out meetings like these are refresher courses not just for the clubs but also for GotSoccer. It gives us the opportunity to work directly with those club members who are in our system on a daily basis.

Two weeks ago Bill was in Miami for the Region A registrars meeting.

Gayle Smith, Arkansas Soccer's Executive Director on the fields in Nashville

State Rep Dominique Buckler of South Texas caught up with Gavin on Friday evening to say how helpful GotSoccer had been in getting the updates out to her teams, while Gayle Smith of Arkansas was using both the text messaging features as well as email to coordinate the new times and locations to the Arkansas teams.

On Tuesday Gavin's off to Boise for the Far West Regionals

Gayle Smith, Arkansas Soccer's Executive Director on the fields in Nashville

Over twenty five clubs and tournaments have utilized out website software and our graphic artist Sheuneen Ta over the last four months. We try and blend creativity with affordability while making certain each site is unique. Most soccer clubs need the same elements, but there's no need for a cooky-cutter approach.

Jared and NJYSA Executive Director Al Sinclair at Rider University

"It's been great," says Joe Robb, the NJ Youth Soccer president. "Last year we had 35 different schedules floating around, and even on game day there must have been five different versions. GotSoccer has made it so easy."

The event utilized the GotSoccer Video Scoreboards as well as the profile books for college coaches.

Jared reports that there were over 150 college coaches at the tournament.

"Some very good schools as well," he said.

At GotSoccer we're always concerned about security and we thought long and hard about adding this feature. We could have allowed the pictures to be displayed when we changed the ranking format a couple of years ago, but held off. However, we feel that if we provide the tools for team managers and coaches to decide whether or not to provide this functionality the choice lies in their hands.

Remember, GotSoccer NEVER publishes personal details about players. We work very hard on security.

"It was very helpful," says Bill. "We are just starting our second year with Florida and have undergone an intensive transition period."

"It's been extremely insightful to hear the comments from practicing registrar's in this area, and get their feedback."

Bill is hoping to attend the registration meeting for the other three FYSA regions.

"It was handy having Marino Torrens, the FYSA president and Patty Wilson from Region A alongside me. They were just up in our Neptune Beach offices last week getting an in-depth walkthrough on our software last week, so they were well up-to-date on all aspects of GotSoccer.

Gavin on the beach in Bournmouth

"When I first left Africa many, many years ago and was in my early twenties, I passed through Bournemouth. But that was over 30 years ago. It really is a lovely city."

Today Gavin will be inspecting the fields at Chapel Gate where the event will be played.

GotSoccer expects about 20 teams from the USA to travel over next year to play against local opposition from Southampton, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and London.

Tour organizer Teddy MacDougall who played for Manchester United, Liverpool, West Ham United and Southampton in a long and illustrious career is a local legend in Bournemouth. It was here where he set so many goalscoring records that they named a stadium stand after him.

Teddy will be responsible for managing all aspects of the tour, including the tournament itself. He's being doing it for over 15 years. Check out the GotSoccer International Cup for more information.

GotSoccer's Scott Johnson

In the last several months we've been working diligently on rewriting our Referee and Referee Assigning program, and it's no coincidence this effort has coincided with the arrival of Scott Johnson at GotSoccer. A client for several years, a software programmer and Montana Youth Soccer board member, Scott handled the transition of that state to GotSoccer (in fact, Montana was our first ever state client). Over the years his intelligent suggestions as a client impressed us, and late last year when we were looking to add to our programming staff, Scott's name was the first and only name on the list.

With a passion for referee and referee assigning, Scott took the project as his own and over the last few months has upgraded it substantially - and he's not finished. Look for more improvements coming in the next few months.

GotSoccer has always approached the referee and assigning programming from a totally different angle. The way we see it is that referee costs amount to over 80% of the costs of a tournament or league - and over 80% of the complaints administrators receive are about refereeing. Imaging trying to run a business where you have no control over your costs or your customer service? Well. that's what the soccer community does by and large because until GotSoccer released the integrated assigning software our competitors put out stand-alone software that had no relationship to the scheduling programming. A league or tournament would create a schedule and send an Excel version to the assignor, and would have no way of knowing whether every game was covered, let alone who was assigned to each game.

GotSoccer's integrated system allows assignors to work on the very same schedule the scheduling staff is creating, and all work is seen by all parties live.

GotSoccer Google Analytics for May 23-30, 2011

Memorial Day weekend is normally one of the busiest times of the year, but it also indicates the start of the very busy tournament season. Our traffic will remain peaked now until just after Thanksgiving, with another small peak over Christmas.

GotSoccer has the biggest web presence of any USA soccer site on the internet, with more page hits than the U.S. Soccer Federation and FIFA.

Cerritos Memorial Day Tournament Directors Alex and Walter Camargo on promoting their tournament on YouTube

"It's been awesome," said Alex Camargo, tournament director for SoCal Soccer's Cerritos Memorial Day event, one of the largest holiday events in the country.

"GotSoccer has helped our tournament immensely, says Camargo. "We've been with the company since the beginning and as GotSoccer has grown so have we. Every single year since our first event using the software in 2004 our numbers have increased, and the quality and professionalism has improved. It's been a great journey."

The Cerritos Memorial Day tournament was in fact the second ever event to use GotSoccer. Alex has always thought outside the box, willing to experiment in order to provide a better product. He took a chance using a new, unheralded product like GotSoccer, realizing it could benefit his tournament and the participating teams. Alex was one of the first to leap on our video scoreboard technology, installing giant screen TV's to broadcast the scores, and this year releasing a YouTube movie promoting his event.

"We really hadn't even finished the backend of the product when Alex first came onboard back in 2004," laughs Gavin Owen-Thomas, our president. "I flew out to Los Angeles and did the score-inputting myself and in some cases had to manually calculate the team advancements. It was a little scary, but it was the start of a great relationship that continues to get stronger evert year.

Back in 2004, the software had just been released. The first event to use it was the Las Vegas Premier in March, and it took about an hour to generate the schedule, and changes were excruciatingly slow to make, sometimes meaning the entire schedule had to be regenerated. It bears almost no resemblance to the product that's now used successfully by over 1,000 tournaments nationwide every year.

By Memorial Day two months later six or seven tournaments were dipping their toes into GotSoccer's water, including PDA in New Jersey and the Oswego Prairie event near Chicago. Now that number for Memorial Day has broken the century mark.

But Memorial Day is not our busiest tournament week. That honor comes on Labor Day.

Florida Youth Soccer chief Marino Torrens spent the day at GotSoccer's Neptune Beach office getting hands-on training with our software.

"I'm learning things I didn't know GotSoccer could do," said the FYSA President.

"Being able to do it myself...Bill and David didn't just talk and lecture, they gave me a mouse and let me do the clicking. The training I've received today has been invaluable. I was able to do all the work myself."

Marino came up from Miami with Patty Wilson, the FYSA Region A Director. Apart from going through all the state functionality the two spent considerable time getting tips on the GotSoccer tournament software.

"We schedule the Region A tournaments which feed into the Presidents Cup. This was a great session," said Patty.

Last month four key FYSA staff members spent two days each in our offices getting personal hands-on training,and we also spent a day-long planning and strategy session with the FYSA executive council.