MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards Plugin Users Manual

MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards Plugin Overview

The MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards plugin manages multiple sports team schedules and scoreboards. A variety of shortcodes and widgets are available to display schedule tables, schedule sliders, scoreboards, and countdown timers. An extensive set of display settings is available through the admin screens to customize these displays. Displays may be further customized via the plugin’s stylesheet. The MSTW Schedules & … Continue reading

Add/Edit Game

The Games menu item allows you to add or edit the games on your schedule(s) using the screen shown below. The following paragraphs describe each of the fields on the screen. Title. The title does no appear on the front end. Thoughtful use of the title can be a valuable aid in sorting and searching games. For example, one convention … Continue reading

Add/Edit Schedule

The Schedules menu item allows you to link the teams from the Teams DB to Schedule ID’s (slugs). This essentially identifies the home team for a given schedule. When you add or edit a schedule, you see the screen shown below. The following paragraphs describe the fields on this simple screen. Title. This is the name for the schedule. While … Continue reading

Add/Edit Sport

The Sports menu item allows you to create various sports for your website. This field is used in the [mstw_schedule_table] and [mstw_schedule_slider] shortcodes. The sport will be displayed when the show_sport argument is 1. A creative site admin might also use this meta data to create various features in a site’s theme (menus, etc.). Title. This is the name of … Continue reading

Add/Edit Team

The Teams menu item allows you to add or edit the teams on your schedule(s), including the home team. When you add or edit a team, you see the screen shown below. The following paragraphs describe each of the fields on the screen. Title.. The Title is not used anywhere in the plugin’s front end displays. However, you should choose … Continue reading

Add/Edit Venue

The admin screen shown below provides the ability to add or edit game venues. The fields are described below the image. Title. The post title will be displayed as the name of the venue. There is not a separate data field for this purpose. Address, City, State, Zip. These fields are used to create the Google map for the venue. … Continue reading

Adding a Game To a Scoreboard

The MSTW Scoreboards metabox in the right hand column of the Edit Game screen is shown below. To assign the game to a new scoreboard (and create the scoreboard), simply enter the scoreboard name you want to use into the text box and click the Add button. To assign the game to an existing scoreboard, enter it and it will autofill with a … Continue reading

Change Log

1.2 Added a scoreboard ‘ticker’ shortcode – a slider of games & scores intended for the top of pages. Added a Scoreboard Settings tab to the plugin’s Settings admin screen. Added CSV Import support for hand-entered schedules using man-readable game dates & times. All data tables EXCEPT SCHEDULES generate default slugs from titles if slug column is omitted. Updated the … Continue reading

Countdown Timer Shortcode

The countdown timer shortcode – [mstw_countdown_timer] – provides a countdown to the next game for a given schedule as shown below. The shortcode REQUIRES the following argument: sched="schedule-slug" which tells the shortcode what schedule to use to calculate the countdown. The following arguments are also accepted: intro=”text string” defines what string to display before the countdown. Defaults to “Time to … Continue reading

Countdown Timer Widget

The countdown timer SHORTCODE [mstw_gs_countdown] accepts the following three arguments: 1. sched=”schedule-slug” tells the shortcode what schedule to display. 2. intro=”text string” defines what string to display before the countdown. Defaults to “Time to kickoff:” 3. home_only=”true/false” tells the shortcode to countdown to home games only. Defaults to false (all games). The sched argument is REQUIRED. Nothing will display without … Continue reading

Creating Schedules with Team Logos … the right way

Schedules & Scoreboards supports the display of team logos in schedule sliders, schedule tables, scoreboards, and countdown timers. However, some groundwork is required to take advantage of this capability (nothing is free). I will probably create some videos on all this, but in the meantime here’s a step-by-step version of the how’s and why’s. Note: Besides providing increased functionality and … Continue reading

CSV File Formats

Several sample CSV format files are available in the plugin’s /csv-examples directory. Data for schedules, teams, venues, and games can be exported with the MSTW CSV Exporter plugin. Sports can also be exported, but they are not currently used on the front end. Scoreboards cannot be exported in this release. The MSTW CSV Exporter outputs data in “computer-friendly” formats. All … Continue reading

CSV Import

The CSV Import Admin Screen provides the ability to import any or all of the plugin’s data tables (Custom Post Types): Schedules, Teams, Games, Sports, and Venues, as shown in the screenshot below. Choose the file to be imported from your local machine, and press the corresponding Import button. The system will replica rolex daytona spin silently for a bit, … Continue reading

Display Sport in Schedule Tables & Sliders

Schools and sports organizations frequently use one schedule table or slider to display the games for all their teams. This feature is supported in both the schedule tables and schedule sliders as described below. Adding Sports to Schedule Tables To add the sports to a schedule table with multiple teams, simply add the parameter show_sport=1 to the shortcode. The schedule … Continue reading

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I put a game to a scoreboard? See the Adding a Game To a Scoreboard page. How do I manage the scoreboards? See the Managing Scoreboards page. How do I make a scoreboard appear on the front end? The correct shortcode incantation is: [mstw_scoreboard sb=scoreboard-slug format=gallery] Gallery is the only format that works as of this writing, and it’s … Continue reading

Installation

INSTALLATION NOTES: If you are upgrading, please read the upgrade notes. You won’t lose data but you COULD lose and changes you’ve made to the plugin’s stylesheet. The first thing you want to do after installation is make sure the WP default timezone is set correctly in the WordPress Settings->General screen. The AUTOMATED way: 1. Go to the Plugins->Installed plugins … Continue reading

Known Bugs

Please report any bugs via the WordPress support forums or the MSTW Gold Support forums. Scoreboard filter on All Games admin page doesn’t work. This is due to a conflict with the MSTW Coaching Staffs plugin. The problem in that plugin has been corrected, and is available in the Coaching Staffs development version, which may be found at wordpress.org->coaching staffs … Continue reading

Managing Scoreboards

Access the All Games admin screen from the Games menu item. There is a Scoreboards column on that screen, which provides links to the MSTW Scoreboards admin screen. Scoreboards can be managed (add, edit, delete, change names, change slugs) on that screen (shown below).

Managing Venue Groups

Access the All Venues admin screen from the Venues menu item. There is a Venue Groups column on the far right of that screen, which provides links to the MSTW Venue Groups admin screen. Venue Groups can be managed (add, edit, delete, change names, change slugs) on that screen.

MSTW Roles & Capabilities

The MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards and Team Rosters plugins create a number of custom WordPress capabilities, and assign them across three custom WordPress user roles - Continue reading

Schedule Slider Shortcode [mstw_schedule_slider]

The schedule slider shortcode is: [mstw_schedule_slider sched=schedule-slug] The sched argument is REQUIRED. Nothing will display without it. Many other arguments are available to control the table as discussed below. The schedule slider shortcode supports the display of schedule slider as shown below and on the MSTW Development Site. Multiple schedules may be combined on the same slider by adding schedule … Continue reading

Schedule Table Shortcode [mstw_schedule_table]

The Game Schedules table shortcode is: [mstw_schedule_table sched=schedule-slug] The sched argument is REQUIRED. Nothing will display without it. Many other arguments are available to control the table as discussed below. The schedule table shortcode supports the display of a tabular schedule. The columns can be hidden and their labels/headers can be customized via the Settings screen’s Display tab or via … Continue reading

Schedule Table Widget

Coming Soon.

Scoreboard Shortcode [mstw_scoreboard]

NOTE: You must enter games using the teams database (specifically the opponent team) in order to use this shortcode. It will not work with the legacy game data. The scoreboard shortcode [mstw_scoreboard] displays a set of games as a scoreboard as shown in following image. One argument is required to display a scoreboard, sb='scoreboard-slug', which identifies the scoreboard to display. … Continue reading

Settings – Colors

The Colors settings are shown in the following figure. Note that these settings will over-ride the defaults in the plugin’s stylesheet (/css/mstw-ss-styles.css). However, they may in turn be over-ridden by team & schedule specific CSS rules. Examples may be seen on the MSTW plugin dev site. The corresponding rules are available on the Gold Support code snippets page.

Settings – Data Fields & Columns

Coming Soon.

Settings – Time & Date Formats

The Date/Time formats are shown in the following figure. The fields and their values are self-explanatory. Note that if you decide to use a custom date or time format, there is no error-checking for proper format strings. You may wish to refer to the PHP Date man page.

Settings – Venues

The Game Venues table layout is controlled by the plugin’s Display Settings and by the [shortcode]‘s arguments. The default settings for all game venues tables on a site may be set on the plugin’s Display Settings page. The [shortcode] arguments for individual tables override the plugin’s default Display Settings. So each venues table may have a unique format. The Game … Continue reading

Settings (Admin Page)

The Settings admin page has tabs for Display, Scoreboards, as shown below. These tabs are discussed on the following pages: Display Date/Time Formats Colors Venues Settings Scoreboards Settings

Settings-Scoreboards

The following figure shows the Scoreboard Settings tab on the Settings Admin screen. The fields and options are fairly self-explanatory.

Styling the Plugin’s Front End Displays

The plugin has a default stylesheet, /css/mstw-ss-styles.css, which applies to all front end elements – shortcodes, widgets, and page templates. The default colors are shown on Game Venues table on the MSTW Plugin Dev Site. There are several ways to customize the front end elements on your site, as described below. NOTE that prior to version 1.3, customizations often required … Continue reading

Upgrading to Schedules & Scoreboards

This article explains the steps required to upgrade from Game Locations and/or Game Schedules to the new MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards plugin, which replaces both of them. Two video tutorials on this subject (exporting to and importing from CSV files) … Continue reading

Venue Table Shortcode [mstw_venue_table]

The game venues shortcode [mstw_venue_table] supports the display of a table of game venues as shown below. No arguments are required to use the shortcode, however a number are available to control the display as described below. A new argument in MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards 1.0 is venue_group, which allows groups of venues to be displayed (instead of the entire … Continue reading

Why a Child Theme?

Three paragraphs for WordPress newbies on why you ALWAYS want to use a child theme. Continue reading