WordPress has a nice built in feature to update plugins when there is a new version available. Because wp-SwimTeam isn’t hosted in the official WordPress plugin repository, I haven’t been able to take advantage of this feature.
I have set up projects in the official WordPress plugin repository for both wp-SwimTeam and phpHtmlLib. I am working on a process where the plugin updater will work by adding the code into the WordPress repository when Iam ready to release it.
Currently the version of the code in the WordPress repository is the same as what is available for download although the version number reported is wrong (1.0.553 vs 1.2.553). The “553″ is the critical part of the release number because it represents the Subversion commit number (build number) that the release is based on.
If you see a “plugin out of date” message within the WordPress Dashboard, it is because I am working on this process. The latest and greatest release will likely be available first as a download on this site but when I reach what I consider a “stable” release, I will also make it available through the WordPress plugin repository. Stay tuned as this flushes out.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had started working on a new swim team project. I am calling it Flip-Turn. Flip-Turn is a basic PHP/MySQL web application which allows a swim team or swim association to publish swim results on the web in a format that is easy to navigate and view.
Dealing with results has been the last real big hole in wp-SwimTeam and I’ve started working on it a couple times only to abandon it because I didn’t like where it was headed. Over the winter I had an e-mail dialog where a team was simply looking to store results in a database so they could be easily displayed on a web page. As I started thinking about this I came to the conclusion that it would be an interesting project to work on and would be an easy way for me to find a better way to manage results.
For the last couple weeks I have been working on Flip-Turn as time permits and I now have a basic demo up and running. You can see it here: http://demo.flip-turn.com The demo is pretty simple, it allows a user to upload results in SDIF format and parses the results and stores them in a database. The results can then be queried based on swimmer, event, or swim meet. While pretty basic, it works pretty well.
In its current state Flip-Turn doesn’t deal with relay (E0) records but does handle individual (D0) records correctly. In most cases, what people seem to be concerned with are their individual results so that is what I have focused on. I don’t anything I have done will prevent dealing with relay records at a later date but for now, I don’t plan to address them.
Wile the code seems fairly robust, I am not ready to distribute the code yet as I don’t have a great solution for initializing the database tables or changes to the tables. I need to figure something out there – right now I have an SQL script that needs to be run against the database to create the tables. I used phpMyAdmin to initialize mine.
I fully expect to roll this effort back into wp-SwimTeam as this is something I’ve wanted to do for our swim team for a couple seasons.
I have finally had some time to do testing against WordPress 3.0.1 and in the process, I have ran into a couple bugs that I need to fix. So far I haven’t found any issues running against WP 3.0.1 itself, the things I’ve run into would be an issue with any version of WordPress. These are known issues:
- Critical: Adding a Season will fail with an error regarding an Unsupported Action. This failure is due to a typo in a constant. I am not aware of a work-around.
- Critical: The Users tab on the Manage menu yields a blank screen. The cause is unknown and I am not aware of a work-around.
I hope to have these bugs fixed later this week and fully qualify WordPress 3.0.1.
I just uploaded a minor update to wp-SwimTeam. This release adds enhancements to the reporting for jobs and the opt-in/opt-out system. A new field called “Notes” was added to the Jobs definition. This field is reported when viewing the Job Assignments for a swim meet.
The time stamp for opt-in/opt-out is now included when generating a swim meet report. The time stamp can also be displayed via the short code by adding “timestamp=’y'” to the short code. Reporting the time stamp will allow you to easily see exactly when users submitted their request.
This afternoon I posted a new version of wp-SwimTeam. This version adds e-mail confirmation to the opt-in/opt-out process. It now behaves much like registration does, sending a confirmation e-mail to the swimmer’s guardian and to the e-mail address configured to receive opt-in/opt-out notifications.
There were a also a few minor bugs addressed but nothing of any real consequence.
I have not done much work on wp-SwimTeam over the past few months but about a week ago I dusted off my virtual machine (have I ever mentioned how much I love VMware Workstation?) in preparation for the upcoming season. Since I last worked on the project there have been numerous patches for Windows XP (my development area is an XP VM) and WordPress has moved from 2.7 through the 2.8.x releases and is now on 2.9.1.
All new work will be done against 2.9.1 (for now) so I have upgraded WordPress and the plugins that I use in conjunction with wp-SwimTeam. There are two areas where I will focus on immediately – importing results which I never finished last year and volunteer management. I’ll probably finish the portion of results I am working on right now and then move on to volunteer management since we’ll need that functionality in March when the MacDolphins do registration.
I haven’t posted much but I have been working on wp-SwimTeam off and on now that the MacDolphins summer season is over. I haven’t released anything yet but I’ve made some significant improvements.
Opt-In/Opt-Out
Improvements have been made to the Opt-In/Opt-Out process to make it much less confusing. The Opt-In/Opt-Out form is now smarter, only presenting the list of strokes to the user when a Partial Opt-In/Opt-Out is selected. The ability to Opt-In/Opt-Out has also been added to the “My Swimmers” tab to make it easier to find.
Login Redirect
I’ve also added a new option to control what happens when end users login to a site running wp-SwimTeam. For most users, landing on the WordPress Dashboard page is confusing. They don’t care about 99% of the stuff presented to them nor should they. The plugin now allows definition of a login redirect so the user can be sent to either the home page or the Swim Team Overview (which is what I expect to use most of the time) page. Landing on the Swim Team Overview page makes the most sense for most users since when they login, they are most likely doing some level of interaction with the swim team functionality.
Results Import
Results import is still in progress, the other two areas mentioned above are complete. At this point importing results does little more than perform a first pass validation that the supplied file is indeed a SDIF results file. Now that I have the uploading and validation complete, I need to work on the data model to store results. Results will be connected to swimmers and meets and events. Since a new table will be created, results will change the database version when it is released.
Initially I expect to simply report results from a meet and be able to look at results for any given swimmer. Longer term I want to use Open Flash Chart to plot results on a per swimmer basis over the course of a season or possibly several seasons. I don’t expect to get to this until much later this year though.
WordPress 2.8.x
I am still working with WordPress 2.7.1 in my development environment. I haven’t even tried 2.8.4 yet so I have no idea what the impact is. I will likely do so once I am done with the results.
I posted wp-SwimTeam v0.1.417 this afternoon to the download page. This update adds new functionality and fixes a few minor things which have bothered me as I found them during the season.
The big new feature is a new shortcode – wpst_meet_report. This shortcode allows a the contents of a meet report to appear in a post or a page like this example on the wp-SwimTeam demo site.
The reports also now support hiding first and last names by only showing the initial as well as the ability to override the first name with a nickname if the swimmer’s profile has one. The missing ability to display a map on the swim meet report has been added so the checkbox on the form is now enabled. The reports can now display opt-in and opt-out information chronologically in the order they were added to the system as well as the previously available by name and by swimmer label.
I posted a new build of wp-SwimTeam this afternoon for download. This build supports the new administrative mode for user and swimmer optional fields. It has not had a significant amount of testing but I was able to run through quite a few scenarios and all behaved as expected.
This build also introduces a new type of optional field the NO-YES option. This is similar to the YES-NO option but defaults to NO instead of YES.
I had a request to support fields that weren’t visible to the end users when they used the system. I decided to support these “administrative” fields as I have been referring to them by enhancing the optional fields for swimmers and users to be tagged as “user” fields or “administrative” fields.
When a field is defined as “administrative”, only users with WordPress permissions of EDITOR or higher will have the fields visible. For all other users, they are hidden. An Admin or Editor can change the value of the field and it will be saved when the user or swimmer data is saved.
The first practical usage of this is with a team that wants to mark registration fees as paid on a per swimmer basis. Not the sort of thing you would expose to a parent but useful from a logistics perspective.
Both user and administrative fields are available in reports.
Recent Comments