I have seen a ton of new faces in the North American competitive TF2 community the past few months and I thought that it would be good to write up a post that details all of our site's features in addition to some other important TF2 websites. I know that new players always feel bogged down with information upon joining an online community and as a competitive site that wants to reach out to these players, it's our role to make it easier on them.
In terms of CommFT, our home page shows all of the articles that our team of contributors produce. The top buttons that are labeled "News", "League Coverage", "Predictions", "Blog", and "LANs" simply function to sort articles by type so folks can easily read through pure blog articles or pure league coverage articles. The button labeled "Forums" is just what it appears to be and links to a separate URL that hosts our vBulletin forums installation. Likewise, the "Wiki" button links to a separate URL that hosts our competitive TF2 wiki. If you make an account on the main site, this account can be used to log in to both the forums and the wiki. The final three buttons on the top bar are pretty self-explanatory as well - the "PUG" button opens up a Java-run in-browser IRC client (you can read about pick-up-games HERE on our wiki), the "Files" section is a place to upload and download files related to competitive TF2, and the "About" page explains the purpose of CommFT and the people who make it all happen.
We also have a number of accounts on social networking sites with which we can stay in touch with our readers. I link all of our articles on Twitter, we have a YouTube Channel, and our admins post updates on our Steam Group. Of course we also have an RSS feed built into the site if you are old school like that.
Beyond CommFT, there are a ton of websites that you should have bookmarked. Most deal with North American competitive TF2. I will list them below:
TF2.com - The blog run by Valve where they tease us about updates and promote community events.
TF2 Steam Forums - The forums run by Valve where tons of people, mainly pubbers, argue about crazy TF2 ideas and the like.
TF2 Wiki - A general wiki run by some community members. Refer to it for general questions about TF2...our wiki is focused exclusively on competitive TF2.
TF2 Reddit - The TF2 reddit section that's run by a bunch of TF2 players. A great place to find weird and important stuff alike.
TF2 Lobby - A great place to play pick-up-games without needing IRC or using our website's built-in IRC applet.
TGBF - A casting website that casts a lot of higher level competitive TF2 matches.
PwnageTV - Another casting website that does less TF2 but still has some big matches on occasion.
CEVO - The first league to host TF2 events in North America and the largest league running today. Has divisions for both upper-tier and lower-tier teams.
ESEA - An exclusively pay-to-play league that is focused more on the upper tier of competitive play.
TWL - An always-free league that is focused more on the lower tier of competitive play.
UGC - An always-free league that is focused on new players and non-6v6 formats.
XPL - A brand-new league that is trying to encroach on TWL's territory.
ESEANews - A TF2 news site run by ESEA with great articles written by rk.
Ubercharged.net - One of the oldest general TF2 blogs.
MantaEngie - Some crazy dude.
Friendly Fire Podcast - An older TF2 podcast.
Kritzcast - A TF2 podcast that's popped onto the scene recently.
TF2 Strategy - A website focusing on the strategical aspects of both competitive and pub play.
AsiaFortress - Asian league and community TF2 site.
Outside of North America, these are some important TF2 websites:
VanillaTF2 - A good place to read European competitive TF2 news and gossip in English.
ETF2L - The biggest and oldest TF2 league in Europe.
TFPortal.de - A German TF2 website.
OnlineGamer.se - A Swedish TF2 website.
TF2Sverige.se - Another Swedish TF2 website.
TFortress.no - A Norwegian TF2 website.
TF2.fi - A Finnish TF2 website.
TFHQ.fr - A French TF2 website.
teamfortress.pl - A Polish TF2 website.
TF2Portal.es - A Spanish TF2 website.
2fort.cz - A Czech Republic/Slovakia TF2 website.
TF2.ro - A Romanian TF2 website.
TF2.co.za - A South African TF2 website.
OZFortress - The biggest league in Australia (also a community site).
And of course...for all your server needs...Apoplexy Industries! Let me know if I missed any good websites, regulars.
Comments
Great article put together. Very extensive to anyone looking to follow things and find things out.
Possible to have "dropdown" feature from the Navbar buttons? Example, link to this article under ABOUT. Not that I'm suggesting it go there actually, but meaning a link to this article (I think) is needed.
+1 to the Favorites suggestion too.
AsiaFortress Season 3 registration is open. NA West Coast should have 150 to Japan servers. Would be nice to see a bunch of west coast players play in AFL :3. Hints to eMg
And yes. But you'll see what I am talking about later this weekend. I've talked to eXtine and we're going to give it a shot tomorrow or Sunday.
Well if you don't want to have videos on this site specifically why don't you just have a button there anyways that links to the commft youtube channel in the same way that the forums button links to the forums page?
14 - As I mentioned in the article, the sections serve to sort the articles at this point since all are shown on the front page. If we had the amount of articles that I want us to have, we wouldn't publish them all on the front page and those sections would become more important. I guess that's a pipe dream. Believe me, we've thought about this aspect a lot and something will be changing soon.
As for the videos, the YouTube channel functions for that purpose. We have 0 interest in hosting ANY videos for any number of reasons. BUT we could make a videos page and embed all of our YouTube videos there.
The favorites idea might be possible but I'll have to talk to Ben.
EDIT: He says he thinks it is…
I find it kind of strange that there's no bar just for videos.
I think a more interesting way would be to have a "favorites" bar that they can save the articles/posts/videos they want. It would only be available if you login.
I don't know about you guys, but trying to view match results in multiple leagues is pretty frustrating.
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