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We aspire to be the professional partner that makes your gaming community dream a reality. We want your experience with Tournamatch to be a hassle-free one that ‘just works’.
What started as a simple tournament script for PHP-Nuke evolved into a complete ladder and tournament management system for WordPress powered online gaming and eSports websites. Tournamatch has been privately used and developed since 2001. After releasing it publicly in 2004, I’m proud to offer one of the best and the most reliable systems ever since. I’m passionate about making the customer happy and treating you the way I’d want to be treated.
Tournamatch is written in PHP and powered by lightning fast MySQL database. It seamlessly integrates with your existing WordPress website, includes an automated installation process, and offers a variety of features with a user-friendly administration panel.
We aspire to be the professional partner that makes your eSports or gaming community dream a reality. We want your experience with Tournamatch to be a hassle-free one that ‘just works’.
I first began writing tournament bracket and sign up modules for PHP-Nuke in 2001. My website back then was dedicated to Age of Empires II, hosted on a free hosting provider, and used a .tk URL shortner. We organized tournaments for custom scenario competitions because the MSN Gaming Zone never showed any love to the CS players.
The first ever version of our software, “SkyMods TRN v1.0”, was released. It only supported 1v1 single elimination tournaments and the download was free. Yea…we quickly just started calling it “TRN” after the v1.0 release. Naming things is hard.
After the initial release of the software and two more updates in 2004, we decided against releasing TRN v1.3 in January. There were several other tournament scripts available at the time that would simply take our free product, rename it, and then sell to their own customers. These scam artists advertised feature that didn’t exist, pre-sold features that never materialized, and then ran away with peoples money. We closed the website that gave TRN away for free in August and prepared to relaunch with a new website, a branding update, anti-piracy measures, and a proper eCommerce store to sell the plugin.
We unveiled our new website, www.tournamatch.com in June. We emailed our existing TRN users in late July welcoming them to try out the new product. In August, we opened sales for the newly branded Tournamatch for $25. We sold 9 copies in the first month!
In February of 2008, we released our first major update to the software which included a new ladder system, challenges, advanced match making features, and maps. This update, that took most of 2007 to build, was plagued with bugs and included a challenging system that was so complicated it wasn’t user-friendly. I learned the hard way to avoid taking a massive bite out of new features that take over a year to build. My 2006 to 2009 personal life frequently pulled me away from Tournamatch. For those four years, I was a college student taking 15+ credit hours per semester while working a full time 45+ hour/week job. Years 2008 and 2009 were particular tough: I was a first-time husband, first-time homeowner, first-time living out on my own, and focused on finishing my last year of college. To say I was burning the candle at both ends is an understatement. After graduating in 2009, I stepped away from everything except my new career and wonderful wife. The burnout took years to recover from, and I wouldn’t return to any significant Tournamatch development until 2011.
We released version 2.0 of Tournamatch, our first major update in almost 3 years. It added support for phpBB forums.
Another major update to the software included localization to all source files and translations for 22 different languages. We also added proper support for draws in 2012.
First major update to www.tournamatch.com since its initial launch in 2006.
Unhappy with the hired website update in 2013, I spent most of late 2014 working on my own www update using a responsive template and we published that makeover(the current appearance) in 2015. Finally happy with the new look, I began working on Tournamatch again. Unfortunately, the software was outdated and needed major work to support the current PHP and MySQL versions. This year marked a renewed interest in maintaining this project.
The fruits of labor in 2015 were finally realized this year. We released 4updates in 2016 which primarily focused on security and supporting the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, and phpBB.
We continued our efforts from previous years, releasing 8 total updates including support for WordPress along with many other new features.
During the second half of 2017 and 2018, we observed an increase in traction and some modest growth. Several organizations have built fantastic gaming communities around our software and continue to provide excellent feedback. We added many new features in 2018 across 10 more updates thanks to all of the feedback. The message was getting louder and more clear, however: few customers used phpBB and no customers used PHP-Nuke. The major issues in Tournamatch would be non-existent if we focused on just one CMS. It was time to fully adopt WordPress. On November 19th, my wife and I welcomed our first child, a wonderful baby boy named Ashton!
Year 2019 was about adjusting to life as a new parent and enjoying our new little man. We stopped all of our efforts except ones dedicated to developing a native WordPress version, and in August of 2019, we finally released Tournamatch v3.0 which included support for WordPress. Version 3 no longer supports any CMS except WordPress. We released 10 more updates in 2019.
The year of the pandemic. We pushed out 16 updates this year. Our primary mission was to update the software front end with more asynchronous behavior, make ladder and tournament matches functionally consistent, improve coverage of language internationalization, and improve security. We also added official online documentation for the plugin, new options, new shortcodes, new filters, and countless quality of life improvements. We eclipsed our prior active installation numbers, hired our first non-family team member, and paid off a ton of technical debt. By all measurables, we grew in 2020 and hope to carry that momentum into 2021. Year 2020 was also a devastating year for my family for non-COVID reasons. On June 14th, my wife and I welcomed our second child, a boy named Jayden. He came to us one week early via emergency C-section. Several complications later, we had to say goodbye to our little new man. He passed away June 22nd.
We released 8 more feature updates this year which added many new shortcodes, custom team fields, overhauled the backend, support for rewarding trophies and tournament series. The majority of our work continued to exist behind the scenes – cleaning up code debt and making the plugin more WordPress friendly.