How to Pick your Player of the Year

A great way to close out your season on MaxPreps would be to select your Team Player of the Year, if you haven't done so already! The athlete will be featured on your wall, receive a patch on their roster page and have the ability to share the award with friends and family on all their favorite social networks.
 

To pick your Player of the Year, follow these steps:

1. Login to your coach administration page

2. Go to 'Utilities'

3. Select 'Player of the Year'

4. Fill it out and your done!

If you have any questions or need help, contact us at coachsupport@maxpreps.com or leave us a comment below.

Willie’s Food Truck Comes to MaxPreps

Sometimes, you just need to sit back and celebrate the victories you work so hard for. 2011 was a good year for MaxPreps and our President and Founder, Andy Beal, wanted to have a little party to recognize all the hard work. And nothing says party like bringing out a great food truck from Sacramento!

Located out of Downtown Sacramento, Willie’s food truck has been a local favorite for over 20 years. Best known for their chili burgers (called “Slammers”), Willie’s offers a variety of American favorites like hot dogs, a cheeseburger and fries or a chocolate shake. For a full menu and more details, you can check out their website here.

A line quickly formed upon their arrival at MaxPreps Headquarters. You’d think we’d never seen a food truck before!

In addition to the great food, we also brought in some great cupcakes from local favorites, Icing on the Cupcake. Some of the offerings included: Cappuccino, Red Hot, Confetti, Strawberry and Red Velvet.

are you hungry yet?

After our delicious lunch and dessert we held a contest. Earlier in the day, we shared out a quiz to see how well each employee knew the little details of MaxPreps. Raffle tickets were awarded for each correct answer and if you got the most answers correct you automatically win! Congrats to our biggest winners, Bryce and Scott, who tied for the most correct answers and who also won in the raffle!

Just another fun day in the MaxPreps office - What do you do to celebrate the successes in your life, with your team or in your career?

Are Your Browser Settings Making it Difficult to Use MaxPreps?

Occasionally, our Coach Support team will get calls or emails from users having trouble signing in or viewing certain areas of the site. The majority of the time, this is because their internet browser is out of date, or their browser settings need adjusted.

This post is about browser settings, but be sure to check out our post about browser versions here.

One of the biggest issues for users is that, occasionally, they need to clear their cookies. We wish we were talking about these cookies:

What are cookies? In simplest terms, a cookie is a term to describe a message from a web browser to a web server. The main use of cookies is to allow sites to recognize you to provide a more personalized experience. Sometimes, they just need to be cleared out (especially if you are having trouble signing in or logging out).

Every browser is different, so if you are having trouble with the site you can go here for steps on how to clear your browser’s cookies.

The other main issue we see is that sometimes school or private computers have JavaScript blocked or disabled. When it is blocked, you might not be able to see entire sections of the site, so make sure your browser has JavaScript enabled.

These are the two biggest issues we see users dealing with. Hope this helps!

Internet Browsers and Why it’s Important to Stay Up-to-Date

Recently, Microsoft gave us at MaxPreps a good laugh when they humorously announced the funeral for their internet browser, Internet Explorer 6.0. While IE6 is used by less than 1% of the country, we still get our fair share of calls and emails from users who struggle with our site because of an old browser and we want to help out anyone running into trouble.

Just as an example, here are photos comparing Chrome to IE6 on the MaxPreps home page:

Chrome:

IE6:

It’s not pretty.

If you’ve ever had issues loading a MaxPreps page, or things just looked funky or didn’t work properly, there’s a very good chance it’s because of your browser or browser settings.

Trust us, our site looks and works much, much better on the following browsers and up:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

Google Chrome 4.0+

Safari 3.0+

Unfortunately, no version of AOL is currently compatible with MaxPreps.

Our personal favorite at the office is Google Chrome, but the rest should work just fine. Still having trouble viewing the site? It might be your browser settings. Click here to get some tips on how to fix that.

Why we Love Google Chrome – Creating PDF Documents from the Web

Google Chrome is our browser of choice at MaxPreps for many reasons including the ability to save a web page as a PDF document.  Here’s how to do it:

1. Download and install Google Chrome (it’s free!) if you don’t already have it on your computer. 
2.  Click on the Chrome icon to access the internet.
3. Once you are on the webpage you want to turn into a PDF document click on the wrench icon in the upper left corner and select print.
4. The print preview screen will open where you will be able to adjust the basic settings.  Under “Destination” you want to select Print to PDF.  Then click print.
5. A save box will open where you can choose where on your computer you would like to save the file.  You can change the name (if you would like) and click save. 

It’s that easy! Now you know how to save the printable schedule, roster or stat reports to your computer as a PDF from MaxPreps.

Download Google Chrome now.

Learn more print functions built in to Google Chrome.

Our Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

As much as we all love football here at MaxPreps, we have to be honest - one of our favorite parts of the Super Bowl is the commercials. Between watching Manningham’s memorable catch and pigging out on Super Bowl snacks, we made sure to catch the ads and picked out a few of our favorites:

M&M’s “Just My Shell”

Volkswagon Inspires Dog to Get in Shape + Darth Vader

Doritos “You Didn’t See Nuthin.”

The Camry: Reinvented

And finally, a clever ad from Chevrolet: Chevy Trucks (and Twinkies) Survive the Apocalypse

Do you think these were were the $3.5 million for each 30 second spot? What was your favorite? Tell us in the comments below.

One of Our Own Signs NLI on Signing Day

Brandon Bowling is the Project Analyst for our team here, but he is also a coach for the Folsom High School Baseball team. Check out this touching story from Coach Bowling about the first athlete he's coached to go off and play at the next level.

"There is no better moment as a coach than seeing all the hours of coaching pay off when one of your student athletes gets the opportunity to take their game to the next level.  National Signing Day is always very special as a MaxPreps employee but this year it was even better!  Myself and Head Coach Gilbert Brewer had the opportunity to be part of Jake's special day.  Coach Brewer has been grooming Jake since he was a sophomore and his efforts have paid off.  His hard work through the fall and instruction from his coaches into the winter has paved the way for solid success.  Jake will be playing next fall at NCAA Division II Colorado Christian…  Best of Luck Jake!"

Congrats to Jake Brandt! Check out his MaxPreps page here and stay tuned for another exciting baseball season.

Behind the Scenes – National Signing Day 2012

February 1, 2012 was National Signing Day. What should be a holiday for high school and college fans is the day that most seniors sign their National Letter of Intent (NLI) to play their sport at the college of their choosing. It is usually drama filled and always exciting. It is also one of our busiest days of the year!

Our editorial team arrives to MaxPreps before the sun rises. All hands are on deck to cover the breaking news from when an athlete makes their commitment to when they actually sign their NLI and anything in between.

Todd, Mitch and Michelle hard at work to be the first to break the news!

Our Editorial Director Steve Montoya leads the charge, working hard from his office tracking updates and coordinating writers and photographers. He stays on top of all the news with a TV (dedicated to tweets) and three screens at his desk.

The work doesn't stop in the MaxPreps office. We had writers and photographers scattered across the country. Also, our national football editor Steve Spiewak was on set with CBSSports Network to tape live segments with recruits, coaches and to provide expert feedback!

            

 Steve, Molly and Devin Fuller and the CBSSports Network Set

The control room.

Signing Day marks the end of a long and exciting journey for the high school athlete. Congratulations to all the athletes who signed yesterday!  The day finished with MaxPreps ranking these schools as the top 5 recruiting classes for 2012:

1.  Alabama
2. Texas
3. Ohio State
4. Michigan
5. Florida

To see the full list and all of our other Signing Day recaps, go here.

Did you or someone you know take part in the madness yesterday? What's the outlook for your favorite college program next year?