FA kicks off website revamp

The Football Association is working on a major development of its website, which it plans to launch this autumn.

The new site will reflect the FA's desire significantly to expand the content platform it has created since buying TheFA.com domain name in late 2001.

"Since we switched to the new name, the site has seen a dramatic rise in popularity from being in the top 500 to being a viable competitor for the position of number one sport site in the game," the FA's chief information officer, Andrew Halstead, told vnunet.com's sister title Computing.

The FA wants radically to increase the amount of football data available on its site, adding to the depth of news information it already provides.

"We want to capture every piece of information relating to football, from player details to fixtures and results to league tables, at every level of the game. Our goal is to become the data owner of football for the UK," said Halstead.

Behind the scenes, the new site involves a switch in software architecture and the rollout of a football administration system called Full:Time.

The system will provide a means for capturing local football information from counties, leagues and clubs around the country, feeding into the content engine of the main portal.

"We want to create a site that will not only give the latest football news and information, but will provide detailed data about grassroots football, such as details about your children's local matches," explained Halstead.

The site will be based on Microsoft's .Net platform, with content being managed by the supplier's Content Management System 2002.

Halstead is modest about his department's contribution to football's most influential organisation.

"My only need is to find out how technology can be used to benefit football," he claimed.

But Halstead maintained that there are times when the job is quite special, such as on 22 May last year when the England World Cup squad was announced exclusively on TheFA.com.

"There was a brief period when we were swamped with about 40 per cent of all the internet traffic in the UK, which is not something that IT directors in normal businesses get to experience," he said.

www.thefa.com