Football club website and availability system for Newtown Forest FC
A website and squad management system for Newtown Forest, one of the leading cross-community football clubs in Northern Ireland, with over 80 registered players across three senior teams. We are their shirt sponsor as well as their developer.
Newtown Forest FC in numbers
The challenge: three teams, no home online
Newtown Forest run three senior teams and over 80 registered players on volunteer time.
Fixtures, results and squad news lived wherever somebody last posted them, and players, parents and supporters had no single place to look. Team selection was the worse job: chasing availability across WhatsApp every week, then working out who was actually free, fell to the same few people.
A club website has a recruitment job to do as well. Players choosing where to sign look for a club that appears organised, and nothing about Newtown Forest online suggested an operation running three teams at three different levels.
It also had to be maintainable by whoever happened to have ten minutes. Volunteer time is the entire budget, so anything that depended on one specific person would stop working the week that person got busy.
Our approach: fixtures and availability
The Newtown Forest website prominently shows fixtures for all three senior teams, allowing players, friends & family to stay up to date with the latest results and plan to attend games & support the team.
The club's admin team can update the site using a custom CMS, created using the latest version of Laravel Nova to manage content like news articles, player profiles and more.
In 2023 we delivered a bespoke availability management tool, allowing the club to send out a mass WhatsApp message to their players with a link to their website to confirm their availability for matches. The system collects this data and uses it to allow managers to select players for their match-day squad and keep track of goals, assists, cards etc.
We are active shirt sponsors for the club and currently work with them providing tech support, content updates & social media graphics.
What we built for Newtown Forest FC
A club running entirely on volunteer time, so the test for every feature was whether it saved somebody an evening.
Fixtures and results
All three senior teams in one place, so players, parents and supporters stop hunting back through social posts for a kick-off time.
Availability system
A message goes out over WhatsApp with a link, players confirm on the site, and the replies collect themselves instead of being counted by hand.
Squad selection
Managers pick a matchday squad from whoever is available, which is the job that used to eat a Thursday evening.
Player statistics
Goals, assists and cards recorded per game, which the players check afterwards far more than anybody expected them to.
Profiles and news
Squad profiles and club news, managed by the admin team through Laravel Nova rather than by us.
League tables
Tables and the summer league alongside the fixtures, so a season makes sense at a glance.
What Steven said
★★★★★
The website has completely transformed how our club is perceived and has been a game-changer for recruitment. We've seen a significant increase in new players wanting to join since launching the site.
Everyone from players to friends and even opposing teams regularly comment on how easy it is to keep up with fixtures, results and club news. The players particularly love being able to check their stats online after each game.
The mobile experience is fantastic which is crucial since most people check the site on their phones. Element Seven delivered exactly what we needed and continue to provide excellent support.
The Tech-Spec
Laravel and Vue with Laravel Nova for the admin, so the club’s volunteers manage fixtures, results, profiles and news themselves. The availability tool is bespoke: a link goes out over WhatsApp, players confirm on the site, and managers build the matchday squad from the replies.
HTML5, SCSS, CSS3, vue.js
Laravel (MVC framework)
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Mailchimp
Services on this project
Most of our clients use more than one.
Bespoke websites
Designed and built from scratch around your business rather than adapted from a template. Every page and every field is there because it earns its place.
→ 02Web applications
Software that does a job for the business rather than describing it. Members platforms, custom admin software and internal tools built around how the work actually gets done.
→ 03Maintenance
Updates, backups and security handled quietly in the background, so problems are dealt with before they become urgent.
→More work
A few of the other projects we have built.
