• rtg [del]
• 2009-04-27

It is election time again! Starting this season we will have elections for both the the Senior NT and the new U21 National team. You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a Senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] forestman or [U21] guacamole. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

We would also like to introduce the following new countries.

Pilipinas
Prathet Thai
Nicaragua


Elections will start April 27th and end 10th May at 22:00, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• Julius [del]
• 2009-03-02

We have updated the Sokker scripts; bringing new features including a world map of Sokker and graphs for each country. The world map displays country size (total users), growth rate (number of new users registering for that nation in the past month) and value of users currently online (% of that nation's users currently logged in). Those statistics can also be viewed by each continent.

Other new improvements:
- browsing sent sk-mails and searching by recipient
- forwarding sk-mails to other users
- searching for forum threads created by a specific user
- option to add videos to forum posts by creating a mark [video] / [video wid= hei=]
- several bug-fixes

• guacamole [del]
• 2009-01-04

It is election time again! Starting this season we will have elections for both the the Senior NT and the new U21 National team. You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a Senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] forestman or [U21] guacamole. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections will start January 5th and end January 18th, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• guacamole [del]
• 2009-01-02

Today we are introducing the previously announced new skin (based on the user designs in the contest some time ago). We have designed it for the most used resolutions, such as: 1024x768 and 1280x800 (which still are used by ~70% of internet users). The page has been rebuilt as well. The most important changes are a reduced top bar and the google ad has been moved to the right side. The google ad has also been removed from the forum page, as it was annoying to many users without plus.

We hope you will like the new skin. Unfortunately, it is impossible to please everyone. We feel that it looks better than the current skin and should work better for various web browsers. In the first week we will randomly use both the current and new skin on the opening page for new users to show us which skin gets more users signing up.

User created skins should work correctly, with the possible exception that the placement may need to be updated. This should be easily fixable by the skin author.


There are also a few small new features.
- If two users use google map settings, the distance between their stadiums will be displayed.
- From now on you will be able to see whether a player is maxed out in a certain skill. Maxed skills will be referred to as "superdivine" on the player page. This is not a new skill level, it is only an indication that the player will no longer benefit from training. It will not be numerically visible in assistant manager programs.

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-12-24

As our holiday present to our users, we're pleased to announce that for the upcoming season Under-21 National Teams will be added to Sokker. This has been one of the most requested improvements and we hope it will be a great success.

The U-21 NT matches will be played on Fridays. In this first season only friendly matches will be played; U-21 World Cup Qualifications are planned for the following season.

Please note:
- Players aged 21 or less may be called up by either the U-21 NT or the Senior NT, but may only be in one team at a time. The coaches can of course exchange players between the two teams.
- Users can be manager of only one NT at a time so the Senior and U-21 teams will have different coaches.

Currently, Friday has no special events in Sokker. Next season will bring a new opportunity to see bright new talent from all around the world as the young stars of Sokker represent their countries!

Festive greetings and best wishes for a happy New Year to all our users!

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-12-08

The following rules have been updated for clarity and to ensure consistency in translations among all Sokker countries:


CHAPTER 1: Registration (slight change to discuss email address importance)
CHAPTER 2: Sokker Rules (clarity in sharing connection rule, addition of sharing teams rule)
CHAPTER 4: The Players (additional information on defending skill)
CHAPTER 7: Sub-Junior School (maximum users joining per week)
CHAPTER 8: Transfers (clarification of transfer listing fee)

More information on the changes being done can be found in this thread.

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-12-06

In NT friendly matches starting Saturday December 6, 2008 we will test the following engine modifications:
- Instead of trying to pass to the strikers right away, players will more often try to use combination passes to move the ball upfield.
- Players will now consider if pass recipient is offsides prior to making a pass (the correctness of this judgment will be based on playmaking).
- Players will less often tackle from behind. Instead, they will try to move in front of the player in possession and look for a more favorable angle.
- Experienced defenders near the goal may be able to clear the ball immediately after a missed reception.
- Players dribbling direction will be somewhat more varied, instead of proceeding directly towards the goal in most cases.
- It will be harder to pass an opponent in the way of an attacker. A good defender will be able to either block or at least slow the attacker somewhat.

Any changes to this new engine will be assessed during NT friendlies and club friendlies, with this version of the engine being official starting next season. Playoff games will still use the current version of the match engine.

Bugs reporting: please report all engine bugs in the Bugs / Ideas (en) forum. Please include one topic for each type of bug, always include match and minute. Notice that we have changed player position evaluation, which has not really been modified since Sokker started, so input is especially needed in this version (e.g. if a player always tries to pass to wrong positioned partner). Any testing done now improves the quality of the engine for next season!

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-11-20

It is time to announce the winner of our design contest. Based on the vote of our users, we are awarding the 10 years plus to ila-a based on his winning design. Congratulations! :) Enjoy it!

We also are grateful to all participants of the contest. Thank you! Your ideas, as well as the discussions in the voting thread, will help us to improve the future design of our site.

The winner’s design, however, cannot not be implemented due to technical reasons associated with Web pages (ie: font not available on the web, etc.). Instead, a new design based on the ideas and the work of another participant is being developed. We will announce the new design when it becomes available.

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-11-19

This weekend's World Cup Quarter Finals saw four remarkable matches, with yet more shocks. In the biggest shock of all, the mighty Polish juggernaut has been defeated for the first time in WC history during the knock out stages! The resilient Italian side came from behind twice in the match to finally secure a 3-2 win against a 10 man Polish team. The Italians now progress to a semi final meeting with England who, despite having a squad hit by injuries and suspension, came from behind to defeat Argentina 2-1 in another thrilling encounter that could easily have gone either way - with the Argentines agonisingly hitting a post in the final minute of the game.

The other semi final pits the Spanish against the Dutch, with Spain now vying for supremacy in Sokker following their capture of the European Crown in real life. Yesterday saw the Spanish edge another tight match against the Czech Republic 2-1; yet again the winners of this contest came from a goal behind. The Netherlands went ahead in their game with Slovakia able to tie it in the second half. This was the closest quarter final game with neither team managing a deciding goal in the 90 minutes. In fact a further 30 minutes of extra time would not see a decisive strike, unfortunately the Slovakians forgot their penalty shoot out footwear and Holland went through 4-1 on penalty kicks.

Whatever happens now in next week's Semi Finals, for the first time ever there will be a new World Champion! Due to the nature of their win over Poland - Italy are now favourites for the title, but after yesterday's events it is clear that anything can happen with a favourable hand from lady luck being a major contributor in such tight games.

Well done to all of the successful managers and lets all cheer on the remaining teams in what is proving a very exciting World Cup so far!

• guacamole [del]
• 2008-11-11

On Friday November 14, 2008, we are going to install a new database server. This new server will be configured to use Solid State Drives (SSD) that offer faster access times than common harddrives.
The main goal of this upgrade is to reduce the time of the morning updates which currently takes about 2 hours and causes Sokker to be mostly non-accessible for that time.

We will start with the installation early in the morning, but it will take a few hours to complete due to copying the matches database that is stored on large but slow disks.
All transfers will be moved according to following list:
- Installation time less than 8 hours - deadline moved by duration of the downtime;
- Installation time more than 8 hours - deadline moved by 24 hours;