Build log · Shipped Sep 14, 2026
A test board that only ever emails me
Football Squares has a test board and unlisted boards, so a season can be rehearsed without a single family getting an email they shouldn't.
Before a real board runs a season, I run one that isn't real. The trouble with rehearsing anything that sends email is obvious: one wrong setting, and a whole team gets a results email for a game that never happened. Football Squares has two kinds of boards to keep that from happening.
The test board
One board is the test board. Every email it produces is delivered to me and nobody else, even when the message was meant for a member. Mail addressed to anyone else is dropped. The one exception is the sign-in code, which still goes to whoever asked for it.
That lets a whole season run on it, with draws, game-day emails, results and reminders, exactly as a real board would.
Unlisted boards
A board can be unlisted. It disappears from the list of boards on the home page while staying exactly as it was.
- An unlisted board sends no board email at all, to anyone.
- Only I can sign in to one. Anyone else who asks for a code is told "This board is private and isn't taking sign-ins."
- Joining it is turned off.
It's how a board gets built and looked over before its team ever sees it.
Who controls what on a real board
A real board belongs to its team, and the team's admins run it: confirming payments, managing members, settling prizes. Three things stay with me on every board:
- making someone an admin,
- drawing the numbers by hand,
- locking the board for the season.
Those are the ones that can't be taken back, so one person is answerable for them.
One more piece of the same idea: when a member replies to a board email, the reply goes to that board's own admins. I only get it if I'm the board's only admin.