Standings to the Internet

If you want to publish your tournament on the internet quickly and easily, we recommend using TS's built-in automatic internet publishing. Should you, however, want to create your own manual internet webdesign in stead, read on!

By selecting File – Export – Standings to internet, TournamentService (TS) will open a dialog to allow you creating a standings file in HTML format. The suggested filename is similar to the tournament filename (plus the group name if necessary) with file extension HTM. This file is intended for publishing to the internet, if you have an account.at an Internet Service Provider (ISP) allowing you to do so.

You will need to transfer the created file to the WEB-server using FTP or some other external tool (ask your ISP).

Clickable game links

It's becoming increasingly popular to publish not only the standings, but also the moves of each each game to the internet. Of course, TournamentService does support this! This is what you do:

1. If you prefer to save the  files to be published, in a folder other than the one suggested, change this first in the "filename" field. TS will remember this setting.
2. If applicable, select groups to be included, and the options for HTML creatiion
3. Optionally, click "Edit template" and follow the instructions in the file to if you prefer to use a different pgn viewer on your web pages
4. Whenever a round has been paired, use the "Create/update gamefile(s)" button to create the pgn file(s). The pgn file contains all the games from each pairing group. If the file already exists, it will be updated to include the new round - no information will ever be overwritten or erased. 
5. Now you can open these files using your favorite pgn editor, such as the free Chessbase light or PGNtoJS. You will find all the games and players are already in there, ready for you to enter the moves. 
6. When finished, save the pgn file from your pgn editor, remembering to replace the games and NOT create new ones. You can of course also edit these files from another PC.
7. In the field "internet address" you need to enter the internet address (URL) of the FOLDER on the server where the htm/pgn files are uploaded. So, if the standings file is to be reachable on the internet as as http://www.barentsnett.com/myfolder/results/mytournamentfilename.htm, you would enter a string like in the example to the right here. That is, the entire adress WITHOUT the file name.

Now, whenever you click OK to produce the HTML page, TS will find the pgn file(s) and automatically make links from the standings +/- table, allowing the public to click a result and view the game in their web browser

Later, when you transfer the html file(s) to your WEB-server, remember to include the pgn file(s) also. All files must exist in the same folder on the server.

This process is highly automated. You can of course do it manually instead, but in that case you must observe the following:

Working with PGN files

We recommend you to just edit the pgn-file TS creates for you, as described above. But if you, for any reason, cannot do this, observe the following: You must enter the games in one pgn file, and save it with the same name as the tornament file (except the pgn extension). If the tournament is played in more than one pairing group, there must be one pgn file for each group. In this case a dash and the group name is appended to the filename. 

For TS to find the games in the PGN file, only two fields are checked: The player's names, and the round no. This means:

• You must make sure the names are correctly spelled in the pgn file (however TS accept minor differences in upper/lower case and swapping of first/last name)
• You must enter a round number when entering a game in ChessBase,
• You may, but don't have to,  enter the event name in Chessbase.
• The pgn file may NOT contain games of the same player's from other events, because name and round number must uniquely identify a game in the pgn file.

You will need a PGN editor to enter the moves of the chess games.ChessBase is of course much used, but there are other solutions as well, like Chessbase light or the free PGNtoJS. (note: Earlier, the free edition of  ChessBase light was a good alternative, but the newest version (2007) no longer can save pgn files until a license is purchased)

Working with ChessBase:

If you use ChessBase, you must remember to select Replace when saving the games. If not, they will be created twice in the file.

If you choose to have the games in the native ChessBase's file format (CBH), these must be converted to PGN before they can be used by TournamentService: Open the CBH-file and select all games (click the first, and hold down the shift key while clicking the last game). Then, choose  File - New - Create textfile. Check the selection for 'pgn' and save with a file name as described above..