MSTW News Archive

MSTW Team Rosters 4.2

I hope this note finds you all well during these trying times. I’ve been writing a little code while sheltering in place without spring sports, and MSTW Team Rosters release 4.2 will soon be available on wordpress.org and on your Installed Plugins admin screen. The primary upgrade is a long-requested feature – the capabilty to sort roster tables by number and name in the same way tables can be sorted by column on WordPress admin screens, e.g, All Posts or Team Rosters -> Manage Players. You can try it out on dev.shoalsummitsolutions.com.

Given that I’ll be holed up a bit longer, upcoming improvements include additional enhancements to the front end displays [shortcodes], improved integration with the MSTW League Manager plugin’s features, and the ability to manage team rosters by year. If any of you have requests for Team Rosters features please send them to me as soon as possible.

MSTW League Manager 2.7 Fixed

I believe version 2.7 of League Manager is fixed and posted in the wordpress.org plugin repository. I did not change the version number, so you will not get a notice on your plugins page that it’s been updated. If you have previously installed it, deactivate it, delete it, and add it again. You can search for ‘MSTW League Manager’ on your site admin plugin screen, and it should pop right up.

I hope this is that last post on this subject, but if you encounter any other issues, please let me know and I will address it ASAP. But hopefully you won’t have to hear from me again until tournaments (MSTW Bracket Builder) are updated, and tournament games can be displayed in the League Manager schedules.

BTW, some of you have asked, and yes, the format for the

shortcode mstw_league_schedule_table shortcode requires a "league" argument.

shortcode did change to better accommodate ‘meets’ in that schedule table. You will only see this if you are using the extensions in the MSTW League Manager Add-ons plugin.

Problems found in League Manager 2.7

Users have alerted me to the following problems with MSTW League Manager 2.7. If you haven’t installed it yet, WAIT a bit while we sort things out. I’m confident there are not significant issues, just some mistakes, but before I get to the specifics of the 2.7 builds, here are a couple of general pointers:

  • If you use the extensions in the MSTW League Manager Add-ons plugin, you should always install the SAME VERSION of League Manager and the Add-ons. I forgot to mention this in my release announcement/email.
  • If you expect to see the output of a plugin, maybe a pretty schedule table, and instead you see some text like

    No games found for specified league: league-slug, and season: season-slug.

    , it’s always because the plugin code is not found. (This applies to all WordPress plugins, not just MSTW.)

As for the specifics:

  1. If you are using the MSTW League Manager Add-ons plugin, and you install the MSTW League Manager plugin version 2.7 but don’t install version 2.7 of the Add-ons, you may see a text message just like the one above. Install MSTW League Manager Add-ons version 2.7.
  2. If you see a text message like

    No LEAGUE specified in shortcode.

    , it’s because I made an error packaging the build. I’m testing a patch tonight. I will post/email a message when the patch is available on wordpress.org.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused to plugin admin/users, and want to thank those who have helped me sort this out.

MSTW League Manager & LM Add-ons v2.7

New in MSTW League Manager – “Meets” with shortcode and template support. Watch more about meets …

Also in version 2.7 an “All Sports” sport concept intended for sites with a large number of teams, sometimes the high schools in an entire state. Watch more about All Sports:

“Local” sites generally track a manageable set of local leagues and teams – schedules, league standings, team rosters, highlights, and so forth. However they must manage a large set of teams on the site for non-league games and state playoff games against local teams. These sites don’t store any information about these non-local teams other than including them on local team schedules, tournament brackets, and meets. In particular, the site has no interest in tracking these teams’ leagues.

But here’s the problem: when creating a non-league game, all teams playing league’s sport so up in the drop-down list of teams for the game. But leagues, not teams, are attached to sports. So admins would create a “generic” league for a sport, and put teams in it. This works, but a non-local school may compete against local schools in many sports, and they have to be added to a “generic” league for each sport. This becomes a significant maintenance burden for literally hundreds of ‘non-league’ teams.

“All Sports” is one solution: In version 2.7 a “generic” league can be created as an “All Sports” league. If school A has 10 teams in 10 sports, one school A team can be created and placed in the “All Sports” league. That team will then appear in the team dropdowns for all leagues, regardless of the league’s sport.

MSTW League Manager & Add-ons 2.6 Released

Versions 2.6 of both the MSTW League Manager and the MSTW League Manager Add-ons plugins have been released. There are three main enhancements:

  • Added support for BYEs (or open dates). BYE games can now be created in Add Games and Manage Games screens, and then displayed in the shortcodes. This will support a much improved display of brackets with an “odd number of teams” in next release of MSTW Bracket Builder. Read more here.
  • Added the option to link game time/result to a media URL in the Settings screen, schedules tab. If there is a media link for a game, the link will be added and a media icon will be displayed in the time/result field AND YouTube links will be automatically embedded in the single game page content. Read more here.
  • Added a new multi-team schedule shortcodeEither a teams, team, or league argument must be passed to the mstw_multi_team_schedule shortcode., which behaves much like the multi-league standings and schedules shortcodes.

A number of minor bug fixes and JavaScript upgrades are also included.

There were no major upgrades to the MSTW League Manager Add-ons, it was simply updated to support the changes in MSTW League Manager, for example, support for BYEs in its plugins.

MSTW League Manager update should come up on your admin Dashboard -> Plugins. If you have purchased the add-ons, you should be able to access the update using the same link you received originally. If not, just let me know.

League Manager & Add-ons 2.6 Released

Versions 2.6 of both the MSTW League Manager and the MSTW League Manager Add-ons plugins have been released. There are three main enhancements:

  • Added support for BYEs (or open dates). BYE games can now be created in Add Games and Manage Games screens, and then displayed in the shortcodes. This will support a much improved display of brackets with an “odd number of teams” in next release of MSTW Bracket Builder. Read more here.
  • Added the option to link game time/result to a media URL in the Settings screen, schedules tab. If there is a media link for a game, the link will be added and a media icon will be displayed in the time/result field AND YouTube links will be automatically embedded in the single game page content. Read more here.
  • Added a new multi-team schedule shortcode

    Either a teams, team, or league argument must be passed to the mstw_multi_team_schedule shortcode.

    , which behaves much like the multi-league standings and schedules shortcodes.
A number of minor bug fixes and JavaScript upgrades are also included.

There were no major upgrades to the MSTW League Manager Add-ons, it was simply updated to support the changes in MSTW League Manager, for example, support for BYEs in its plugins.

MSTW League Manager update should come up on your admin Dashboard -> Plugins. If you have purchased the add-ons, you should be able to access the update using the same link you received originally. If not, just let me know.

MSTW Team Rosters 4.1.4 Released

This release corrects a long standing (or dormant?) bug that caused the Settings to not be saved correctly. It also removes a couple of annoying PHP Warnings and Notices.

League Manager & Add-ons Version 2.5

Version 2.5 of both the MSTW League Manager and the MSTW League Manager Plugins have been released. A couple of new shortcodes have been added, a couple of minor bugs fixed, and some mods have been made in preparation for some new admin features and plugins.

MSTW League Manager update should come up on your admin Dashboard -> Plugins. If you have purchased the add-ons, you should be able to access the update using the same link you received originally. If not, just let me know.

Upcoming MSTW Plugin Releases

Happy Holidays to all and thank you for your support in 2018! A number of MSTW plugin releases with lots of cool new features, not to mention 1 or 2 bug fixes, are looming in 2019:

o MSTW Bracket Builder Premium version 1.3 has been released. Read more about it here.

o New releases of MSTW League Manager and League Manager Add-ons are coming very soon. They contain a number of new shortcodes, some back-end admin features, and some enhancements to better support those of you building sites on the MSTW plugin framework.

o More features for League Manager on both the front and back ends are in development and test. Expect to them this spring. (Sorry, no hints! But if there’s something you would really like to see, let me know now.)

o A minor build of Team Rosters is coming soon. In addition to a number of “maintenance items”, it will include a new shortcode for a player gallery view of a table of player photos.

o A major build of Team Rosters is planned for later this year. In fact, it will probably be an entirely new plugin in order to clean up a number of issues. It will update the plugin’s database structures so that rosters will work seamlessly with the League Manager teams. The plan is to migrate existing rosters – teams and players – to the new structure automagically.

Happy New Year!

Bracket Builder Premium 1.3 Released

MSTW Bracket Builder Premium version 1.2 has been released. A couple of rather large bugs have been corrected, a number of small ‘issues’ have been cleaned up, and the documentation, including the FAQ and Quick Start pages, has been updated, as well as a couple of new video Tutorials – Common Problems and Create Teams. If you have trouble downloading the latest version from this site using the link you received at purchase, please contact me and we’ll get it squared away.

NOTE: You should deactivate and delete version 1.1 before installing version 1.2. Any tournaments you have created with version 1.1 will be available in version 1.2, despite the warning about about “deleting the plugin and all its data”.