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Props to a useful PHP application

I've blogged about good ASP.NET apps before, but I wanted to point out one written in PHP that I like. This one is for the Ohio Valley Region of USA Volleyball, the region that I coach in.

The region is the largest of any of the regions, with around 14,000 members. The regions (and USAV) is the governing body for junior Olympic volleyball, and the girls program makes up the largest portion of the membership. It's the girls juniors section of the site that I use the most. In addition to being a great resource for the bookkeeping of the giant membership pool, the app is also used to schedule tournaments and officials, register teams, show real-time results and rankings, etc. Like any good data-driven app, everything is cross-referenced.

For example, my team is listed here. It shows my roster and our registration numbers. It also shows the tournaments that we're registered for. You can see what the current rank is for your team in your division. That in turn links to tournament results listed by team (we don't have our first tourney results posted yet). You can also shop for tournaments and check an event page to get directions and other info, as well as see which teams you'll play. You can even e-mail club directors and coaches associated with a particular event.

It's not perfect, of course. There are some slow pages here and there, but considering that the whole thing is run by a volunteer, it's good stuff. The other real issue is that it's hard to get people trained to use it correctly. For example, there are only two tournaments listed on my team page. We're registered in more tournaments, but the tournament directors don't have us listed yet with our registration numbers, and therefore they don't show up. We used to have a lot of issues with results getting posted quickly for the same reason. Still, it's getting better, and it's easily the best site of any of the regions.

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