You thought I’d forgotten about TwitterLeague didn’t you?? Well I have been working every evening for the past few weeks working on a complete site refresh and adding a bunch of new features!

Site refresh
The idea behind the refresh was to bring forward some of the XHTML I had been using and overall reduce the amount of XHTML being used, whilst keeping the same content.

The content therefore has stayed the same, apart from when I have written about new features and updated the about/help pages.

Leagues
You might have noticed that the leagues look a bit different. This is partly to match the refresh and partly to modernise the the leagues work. Personally I love the way the leagues look now, but I would say that wouldn’t I! The old league embed code still looks looks the same, the new embed code has the new look.

New features
Where do I start? There are new features all over the place. But I can split them down into two major sections.

Leagues:

• New look leagues
• Order by more data than just followers:
  • following
  • updates
  • ratio
  • signup date
  • alphabetical
• New look “view league” page (example)
• Customisable embed code
• Customisable “view league” page

API

• Made into an API instead of “league XML feed”
• More data in the leagues API
• Ordering method so you can create an interactive league
• Full API documentation

True OAuth integration
I now have a better understanding of OAuth and because of that I have made the integration with the site a lot better and is now much, much more reliable. You can “Sign in with Twitter” and it will take you to the Twitter.com site, let you login and then say you give TwitterLeague access to your account, you will then be taken back to TwitterLeague and into you “My Account” section. This happens evening if you have never had an account with TwitterLeague before.

Sponsorship opportunities
Because of the new format it opens the way for sponsorship of pages and slots like the home page “featured league” section and the “collection” page. At the moment these are sites that I know, have interest in or am involved with. Call it lame self-promotion! If you want to sponsor a section please contact me using the contact page.

Overall I think the site has come along in leaps and bounds. But without you, the people who use TwitterLeague, the site would be nothing.

If you have any feedback please put it into the Feedback Forum.

Thanks

Ollie

You might have seen my blog post a month or so ago stressing the fact that I do not store any users details like username and passwords. I only store a user ID that Twitter can use to recognise who you are.

But now I have taken it a step further and used a system that Twitter is testing called OAuth. OAuth allows you to give applications access to you account, but you don’t have to type in your username or password. What happens is you click the new “Login” button will take you back to Twitter where you can grant access for TwitterLeague to get your UserID.

So it should make users feel happier about using TwitterLeague.

P.S. At the time of writing this Twitter.com has had quite a few Fail Whales which might cause you to get an error message.

This is just a small update to say that I have implemented a couple of changed including the new feature shown in the title.

Firstly I have made the XHTML generated by the embed code fully compliant and accessible (once the javascript is printed).

The new feature allows you show the position of the user in the league table. To do this there is now a new option on the “Edit League” screen (shown below). All you need to do is check the new box and update the leagues details.

Once you have done that the league will have an extra column with the users position.

Let me know what you think.

Ollie

PS Thanks to @dorsetforyou for asking me to add the new positions option into the league settings

After all the confusion about sites storing Twitter usernames and passwords and using them maliciously (twply specifically). I thought I would show proof that TwitterLeague does not store usernames or passwords. I literally give your username and password to the Twitter API to confirm that you are who you say you are at the login stage, then they are then never used again (until you login next). I don’t even store usernames, literally just your user ID which is a unique number Twitter (and TwitterLeague) uses.

To prove it I have a screenshot of the first few records from the TwitterLeague database:

I know that people still get concerned and this isn’t trying to convince you I just wanted to keep all my work open and honest. If you have any questions please contact me and I will help.

Thanks

Ollie

TwitterLeague has been tested enough and fixed a few bugs so now you don’t need an invite code. Just enter your Twitter credentials to signup/login. Then create your leagues.

If you have no idea what TwitterLeague is then please read the TechCrunch article that was written about me and the application itself. Then just visit TwitterLeague.com and create a league! An example TwitterLeague is below:

Please check it out and let me know what you think by commenting below

This is just a note to show that the invite code system will soon be disappearing and the site will be open to all. This means that all you need to sign up with is a Twitter account.

Let me know what you think!

Ollie

twitter.com/ollieparsley

Ok that might be a little misleading. But according to Paddy Donnelly TwitterLeague is in the top 25 Twitter creations. Which I thinks is great that someone uses Twitter and has spread the word about the service. Plus being in the same list as other great apps like Twitteriffic, Qwitter and TwitPic is awesome.

Please have a look at the article and let me know what you think by commenting below.

Olliw

The cron job that updates the follower counts of all users in TwitterLeagues has been fixed. The hosting company has fixed the problem with the cron job. The error wasn’t my code, onstead it was something on their system.

So all updates are working again. If you notice any problems using the contact form.

On top of the WordPress plugin announced earlier there is now the option to all any TwitterLeague to your iGoogle page with the click of a couple of button. Just follow these instructions.

• Create a TwitterLeague, or find a league you want to put on your blog
• Clicke on “view” in your account, or the “view league” page for any TwitterLeague
• Click the add to iGoogle button

There are still some other plugins in the pipeline. But again, if you have any suggestions please let me know by using the contact form.