I got back into the MSTW Team Rosters plugin to answer a support question yesterday, and got a bit nauseous. It’s past time for a MAJOR overhaul to fix some problems, add some features that have been requested, and improve integration with the overall MSTW Framework.

A couple of days ago a user asked on the WordPress forums about increased responsiveness of this plugin to better support mobile applications. That would certainly be nice, and I’ve thought about that issue with the entire MSTW plugin family. Here’s my thought. Tables are provided in the HTML spec for, well, data tables. They are intended to display many columns, and many rows, like say, a roster. Sure one could create a table entire with CSS that would do a reasonable job of adjusting to small screens. But it seems to me that would lose the informational content of a table. It doesn’t seem to make sense for a roster to become two or three columns with data fields hop-scotching their way down the screen. So I’m thinking about the following for small screens. First, restrict roster tables to two or three columns; maybe a photo, name, and number. They would still be tables, but they would fit on small screens. Then make the single player profiles much more responsive. They are not tables and should display their reasonably well on small screens. As for player galleries, those *could* be more responsive, but is it worth the effort is the single player profiles work well on small screens? Who wants a gallery that’s a single column of players? Hummm ….

One thing that will happen is the plugin’s custom post types and custom taxonomies will get new names, which will prevent collisions with sports themes and other sports plugins. This means that when you upgrade to the next release, you will have to export your existing data to CSV files and import it back into the new plugin. The MSTW CSV Exporter plugin and the Team Rosters import function will both be updated to support this migration.

SO, now’s the time to send me your suggestions for improvements and requests for new features that would make the plugin work better for you. You can contact me via the contact form on this site or e-mail me directly. [[email protected]] No promises, but the chances are low that I’ll add exactly what you need if you don’t tell me what that is. 🙂