Reviewing 2017

A customer from 2+ years ago reached out to me recently and inquired about his past purchase. He asked, “Is the license still good or does he need to purchase again?” I was happy to reply that his license is still valid and helped him update his information accordingly. I have never charged for upgrades or “expired a license”. I then attempted to bring him up to speed on what has changed since early 2016, and I got lost in the moment reading last year’s patch notes. I thought this was a good time to summarize Tournamatch in 2017 because the list feels staggering. The major changes include:

• Eight total updates (more than the previous few years combined).
• We added support for phpBB 3.2.x and WordPress.
• Added support for PHP 5.6, 7.0, and 7.1; updated MySQL to support the latest.
• Redesigned the entire front end to use responsive bootstrap.
• Added support for restricting/requiring approval for ladders and tournaments.
• Moved all previous code-configured settings to a page in the admin.
• Replaced the back end to use a responsive bootstrap admin template.
• Replaced all date fields with Moment which automatically display dates locally according to a users browser’s settings.
• Added support for team invites and requests which replaces the old team password option.
• Added support for disputing and resolving disputed tournament matches.
• Added support for setting a max entry size in tournaments.
• Added email notification for matches, challenging, and for confirming match results.
• Added many new CSS class and id selectors to further tweak the UI.
• Added support for setting additional Admins to manage your site.
• Rewrote the entire challenging system to be more intuitive.
• Added automated unit testing coverage to about 40% of the software.

Alright, so two of those bullets weren’t officially released until January 15th. I just missed my December 31st target for the version 2.12 release because I spent extra time on that last bullet. Adding automated unit testing coverage to Tournamatch is the accomplishment I am most excited about. You won’t see it directly; but, what you will see in new features that happen more frequently and reliability because I can get immediate test feedback. While automated testing is nothing revolutionary in software development, it’s something that will make developing Tournamatch significantly easier moving forward. Non developers can equate it to finally getting raid-tier gear in WoW or metal tools in ARK. Its a game changer for any software product expected to grow indefinitely.

If you purchased Tournamatch a long time ago, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I appreciate your support back then and your continued interest. This is a project I currently engage for leisure, and happy customers building successful gaming organization websites is my reward. Your interest motivates me, so thank you for a motivated and productive 2017!