If you want something done you got to do it yourself. If not find the funds to pay someone and make sure that someone is competent. That's my advice to the Malaysian Chess Federation on their website.


I did write about them not posting any updates for a long time 2 years ago. I even wanted to give them a piece of my mind last year but just didn't. To MCF credit, they immediately did post something about the Malaysian Chess Calendar and Malaysian Masters right before I had the chance to post my rant about their website.

I can't hold back anymore. Here we are in 2016 and again... it's been over 6 months without any updates! So is this the cycle? Every year only post once every 6 months or when someone complaints? The federation website should be the place to find out about Malaysian Chess. If not that then at least what's happening within the MCF council. As it is, there is a big AGM coming up in December and even some reshuffling and appointment of new posts but nothing is mentioned in MCF website till today!

Besides that, the latest Malaysian Chess Rating has not been updated since July 2015. All of the hard work done by the rating officer and no place to publish it besides in PDF form in some blogs and email attachments to organisers? Even big events like the Malaysian Chess Festival, Penang Open and Johor Open not even mentioned on the website.


With all that negativity and criticisms out of the way,  here are my suggestions:

1. Spending USD 59 for the Wordpress blog template is not enough. Yearly website hosting not withstanding, it just makes sense to pay someone to update the website. If you are already paying someone, STOP PAYING that person and hire a new one. Not enough money? I am sure someone out there can sponsor MCF for this. If not, find volunteers who have the time and commitment to do this simple task. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to update a Wordpress website.
   
   
2. If cost is a major factor, then CLOSE DOWN the website and switch to free hosting like blogspot  (blogger.com), wix.com or wordpress.com which is seemingly easier to update and maintain. However, this way really doesn't look professional to the public's eye, but it is more acceptable than a website that is gathering dust.
   
   
3. Another alternative, is to open a simple FACEBOOK page and rely on only that to inform the public of MCF activities.
4. Don't be too ambitious. From the subdomain bm.malaysiachess.com MCF definitely intends to make the website bilingual (English and BM). Resolve your timeliness in updates before embarking on that adventure (which is "doable" but not simple by my experience). As it is the "bm." version is more than 50% English and the English subdomain has not been created or is that the main www.malaysiachess.com or maybe eng.malaysiachess.com ?