@CaroLiza_fan what is involved in starting/running a fan fest? I don't think Alice Smith has one, and she probably deserves to.
Now that is a question!
When initially setting it up, it involves a lot of research.
Firstly, finding out the basic personal information about the skater for the introductory sentence. Easy if they have an ISU Bio, difficult if they don't. Fortunately, Alice does (
https://results.isu.org/bios/isufs00118663.htm).
Secondly, linking to all their various skating bios. You would not believe how many databases of skaters are springing up! (A side-effect of the ISU not having a public database). In the template I use for my Fan Fests, it has grown from originally being around 4 sites to now being 14 sites! But, don't worry, it is very rare for a skater to be on all of the sites.
The next part is adding in social media links. This is where you have to use judgement, because there are privacy issues. For younger skaters, I tend to only include links to Instagram. For older skaters, I add in others. I tend not to include Facebook profiles, as I have always thought of it as a site primarily for keeping in touch with people you actually know in real life. A thing I have found recently is that there is an increasing number of skaters on LinkedIn, which surprised me.
Next is possibly the most frustrating part. Listing the music the skater has used each season. Often, this is only possible for the seasons since they got an ISU Bio, as you can put the link into the
Wayback Machine and check old versions of it. (I should have added, when using the Wayback Machine, it is better putting in the address for the old non-secure ISU Bio, which in Alice's case would be
http://www.isuresults.com/bios/isufs00118663.htm . You get more captures than if you put in the new secure ISU Bio address, such as the one that I provided earlier in this post). But for seasons before they had an ISU Bio, it is mostly a case of watching videos and seeing if you recognise the music.
The main body of the post is finding out all the past results of the skater, and bringing them all together into a table. This can be particularly difficult when it comes to domestic competitions, as the Entries / Results pages often disappear. But, fortunately, the British competitions do tend to stay up. Norwegian database Rink Results is a god-send for finding out where skaters competed, and it even has the scores already laid out in a table. The drawback is that it doesn't link to the original Entries / Results pages, so you have to find them yourself. Skating Scores is a good backup for finding competitions that Rink Results may have missed, but you can't copy and paste from that site.
Finally, providing links to programme videos. Unfortunately in this case, Alice Smith is a very common name! But, this is the fun part, as it is facinating when you find really old videos from when the skaters were really young. A tip - use the filter button to sort the videos by upload date.
After you have the thread posted, it is just a case of adding new information in as the season goes on.
I tend to use a lot of tables in my Fan Fests. However, you may prefer to have some of the sections as lists rather than tables. To be honest, it might be better having fewer tables, because tables have become harder to work with since the last update to XenForo.
Oh, I nearly forgot. The most important bit of advice - make out the Fan Fest in a Word document, and then paste it into the forum using "What You See Is What You Get" mode. Makes everything so much easier. Having to make out a Fan Fest from scratch in the forum itself would terrify me!
Well, that is my advice. I hope it hasn't scared you off.
If you need any more help, please don't hesitate to contact me.
All the best!
CaroLiza_fan
www.bbc.co.uk
