That’s why I put together this quick, easy-to-follow screencast on Group Creation. My hope is that this tutorial will make your Weplay experience more efficient and enjoyable. We want all our teams, squads, leagues and groups to have successful seasons both on the court/field and online.

Click here to watch

Roster creation, group privacy settings and design are a just some of the features highlighted in the tutorial. So if you need a little help getting your team or league set up, check out the demo. It’s less than three minutes and you’re sure to pick up a few pointers.

We’ve got plenty of tutorials on deck. From new-feature releases to support services, I’m going to update you all on the latest from the Weplay team. If you have suggestions for future sceencasts, I’d love to hear from you. Jot down your thoughts and send them my way: support@weplay.com

Not a day goes by without at least one player from an under-13-year old team asking us if they can upload photos and videos like “regular” members.

Safety is a topic we consider for every feature we develop. For example, that’s why pre-teen profiles are always private (viewable only by friends) and why we’ve been careful about not allowing them to upload media.

But we also recognize that parents play the most important role in their child’s online interactions. So we surveyed 2,000 Weplay parents to understand their points of view.

Almost all of the parents were very supportive of their child being allowed to upload, but they also wanted to be able to remove photos from their under 13-year-old albums.

So as of last week parents can now give permission to their under-13-year old child to upload photos and video.

Here’s how it works:

- To authorize a child is easy. If you are already a Weplay member, go to the "manage my kids" tab and we'll walk you through it. If you’re not, your child has to put in your email address to request authorization.

- Once permissions are set. Parents can always change their mind and turn it on or off.

- Photos and videos uploaded by approved kids under 13 are posted to their profile immediately and are only viewable by Weplay friends. Simultaneously, an email is sent to the parent notifying them that their child posted photos or videos.

- At any time connected parents can log into their account and access their child’s media through the “manage my child” link and remove any uploads they see fit.

We appreciate all the time and perspective parents have provided us with over the past couple months to make this feature possible.

And, we're looking forward to your thoughts and feedback. Please feel free to email us directly at support@weplay.com or comment below.

In late August Coach Rick Brown sent us a request from his Lady Wolves. His Orlando-based softballers wanted to be able to leave comments and make status updates from their profiles. Our office lit up. Rick’s team understood that Weplay is more than a better way to communicate schedule changes, share media, and message group members. It's also an interactive community where teammates become friends and coaches help each other coach. That’s why team members join Weplay and set up profiles instead of just reading information posted on a website. Everyone can contribute to the group on Weplay. And, keep in touch after the season is over.

So late last night Lee, Noah and Ross pushed status live (aka: What’s happenin’?). Updating your status automatically publishes to your friend’s activity feed so they can keep current. Later this week (Yes, Lee, this week...) we’ll release the ability for you to comment on your friend’s status from your feed.

We also wanted to allow our under 13-year old members to get into the act so we upgraded their ability to communicate safely with an enhanced and fun comment pulldown.

Next week look for the ability to export your Weplay calendar into Outlook.

Keep the feedback coming... and, friend your teammates on Weplay!

Last night we deployed an enhancement for our recently launched Team Messages feature. You can now organize your messages into categories. We've given every group a few categories to get started, but you're able to change them and add you own as well.

To put a message into a category, use the drop-down on the “Post a Message” page:

When browsing your team's Messages section, you can use the sidebar to filter messages by categories:

We hope you like this new addition. It should especially help “power users” who use the Messages feature heavily keep things neatly organized.

We know it can be overwhelming to have lots of email threads flying around your inbox. It takes too much clicking, scrolling and searching to figure out who said what when, and every once in a while an important reply gets lost in the cracks.

With Messages, it's easy for teams to communicate and organize. Instead of sending an email, just post a message and we'll email it to your team. We'll keep an organized, online archive of the message and its replies, which you (or any of your team members) can browse with one click.

We think you'll like it. Check out this brief demo...

Update:

No worries, we didn't forget about discussions... they are safe and sound within the group Message tab. Before this change we were getting questions on how to communicate with your group since there were many ways to do so (comments, discussions, news, email...). Now, groups have one place (Messages) to fit your needs.

We've seen many ways members have been using their groups so please keep the feedback coming and we'll continue to improve communication.