Background
This web site chronicles the development of the wp-SwimTeam WordPress plugin. I started developing this plugin when I was unable to find a suitable solution for managing our neighborhood swim team.
The plugin is developed in PHP and is dependent on the phpHtmlLib library. I have been using the phpHtmlLib library for a number of years on various projects and at this point, can’t imagine developing without it. It greatly simplifies the development of PHP generated pages, has a robust and flexible forms processing engine, and provides a collection of widgets to display data nicely. Because WordPress is based on PHP4, I continue to use the 2.x thread of phpHtmlLib. Walt Boring has allowed me to continue the development of the 2.x thread so I add enhancements to it and fix bugs from time to time.
The goal of this plugin is not to replace a piece of software like Hy-Tek’s Team Manager but instead work in conjunction with it. I want to leverage the end user and have them enter as much data as possible and then import it into Hy-Tek Team Manager and Meet Manager, WinSwim, or Easy Ware’s Easy Meet Manager and Easy Team Manager. My goals is to minimize data entry and duplication and eliminate paper. I would like to build a system which is not dependent on other online services where the look and feel of the data being presented to the user is inconsistent with the team’s primary web site. I would like to build a system which is easy to use for novice computer users.
I decided to start with WordPress because it does (or has plugins available) to do much of what we need – post news, post pages of static information, allow multiple contributors, etc. I figured it shouldn’t be too much work to extend WordPress with a plugin to take care of the Swim Team specific stuff.
