Welcome to our new home

Dear all,

Welcome to our brand new website. As you can see it has several pages and I want to use this News item to briefly explain how to use them.

 

But first a point of order: this is a ‘gated’ community (i.e. you have to sign up as a member) and so we feel there is no reason to use nicknames or handles to refer to yourself. Please use your real first name. You can set this on the Profile page by filling in ‘Display name’. We hope this will avoid confusion and create a sense of community. Besides your first name, any other information you want to give is entirely voluntary, and the website does not use any trackers or other privacy invading tools. 

 

Now about the different pages of our website:

 

First off, we have our Event page. This page lists upcoming events as well the most recent past events. Our monthly meetings will be advertised here. From this page, you may create a new event. Every-one is free to use it to plan a new meeting.

 

Secondly, we have a Calendar page. Here also, meetings can be planned. When you create a new event, the meeting form comes with a Game planner: a matrix where every-one can indicate which games they want to play. For the Monthly Meetup, we suggest you add no more than three games you wish to play. As more games are added by other members, you are free to change your preferences. In any case, the matrix is only used as a starting point for a discussion about who will play what game. If your meeting is dedicated to only one particular game, the Game planner can be used to see who is interested in joining. You can plan meetings either from our Events page (the blue ‘New event’ button) or from the Calendar page (just click on a date). 

 

Third, our Games page. This is a page that displays all the games we collectively own. Again, every-one is free to add new games. Don’t forget to fill in all the fields; it will be really useful to give people unfamiliar to a game a quick overview of what it is about. The games on this page are used to create a drop-down menu in the Game planner (see Calendar page). Also, each game on this page can be tagged with general information (e.g. block game, WWII, Naval etc) for a quick search. Last but not least, every-one can indicate on the page of a particular game whether they own it, want to play it or want to sell it. This will replace our cumbersome Google document and help find gamers with a shared interest.  

 

Fourth, we have a News page. We are not sure yet if ‘News’ is the best name for this section but anybody can submit all sorts of news items on this page. An overview of each Monthly Meetup will appear here, but if you are in the mood to publish a detailed (or not so detailed) AAR of a game you played or a book you read or even some deep thoughts you have about game design, please feel free to do so.

 

Finally, we have our forum. Currently, it has three main topics (Games, General and Marketplace) and should be relatively self-explanatory. One purpose of the forum is to see if there is any interest in a particular game. You could create a forum post about that game, with a poll to see when people might be available. Afterwards you can then create an event. But really anything goes (let’s keep it civilised). Discussions of tactics/strategy in a game are another way to use the forum. What sets the News page apart of the Forum page is that the former is meant for one-way traffic (you post something) and the latter for discussions (but this distinction is not enforced and just a rule of thumb).

 

We are already discussing a few improvements to the website but no time-line is available. High up on the list are additional support to the game planner to work out gamer combinations, and additional search functionality for the Games page.

We are curious to hear how you like our new website. Don’t hesitate to provide us with suggestions etc. But most of all: we hope you will find it supports our shared interest in wargames.

 

Nick, with contributions from Fierman and Rob

 

PS if you wonder why we stepped away from Facebook, there are several reasons. Some people don't have Facebook which led us to start a Discord server and a WhatsApp channel. Keeping all three up-to-date was no fun. We hope that the new website simplifies life for all of us and at the same time makes USL more accessible. Our Facebook and Discord pages will remain but only to show links to the website.

 

PPS the website was built by Fierman, many thanks to him for his hard work!