I am unable to respond to the tutorial posted by @D.J.Petrou concerning cloning matches (To Clone or Not to Clone......It's a Question). My idea/suggestion is a plea that the cloning function remain a feature of the Practiscore website. As @D.J.Petrou is a member of the Practiscore team, his “tutorial” appears to be a judgement from Practiscore that cloning is a less-than-effective way to create a match. In fact, he left out many things (max shooters, match description, setting up payment options, email content, creating a waiver, customizing the registration form, etc.) that need to be configured during match creation but are copied over and only need editing (change the month name or date) when cloning. While creating a match, there are many places where you can omit information or type erroneous information (far more than during the cloning process).
If there are MDs needing help to clone matches, perhaps a tutorial is in order. I can only find a link to a video by Doug Caldwell and, though it is excellent, it does not go into any potential pitfalls and how to avoid them.
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Paul,
Let me clarify things for you a bit.
I did the Cloning test because we hear OFTEN from users about problems they have with match setup and many, many times it is an issue with their cloning of a match. As a matter of fact the first question we ask is “Did you clone this match”. It’s a big enough issue.
Of course there are many extra things you can change in setting up a match that I didn’t change or touch on. But the “Majority” of matches do not go that deep into setup, especially with the primary 3 sports, USPSA, IDPA & IPSC. (their setups are pretty much cut and dried)
I will also tell you I believe setting up all the extras that you mentioned takes only seconds to do and does not add any appreciable time to set up.
My decision was to be basic, hit 90+% of the match setups and keep the article readable without making it 20 pages long.
Also you will remember that I stated…“Here is the basic cloning process as I do it. Your process may be different.”
As far as cloning versus creating new I still stand by my statement that, for me, I will know that I never miss anything when creating a a match from scratch.
We at Practiscore have no intention of removing the cloning option from the web site so please don’t worry over that.
Again, your process may be different and we are here to always help you through any problems you might encounter.
Regards,
D.J.
p.s. moving this to Website where it is more applicable.