Making keeping track of your sports league easy!
What is Sports Bench?
Sports Bench comes in two parts — a plugin and a theme. Both the plugin and theme work on their own; however, it’s suggested that you use both to get the most out of both products.
PLUGIN
Creating and keeping up with sports league stats on the internet can be a hassle. Fortunately, the plugin takes all of the hard work away from you. After a simple five-minute (or less) setup, you’re ready to start entering teams, players, games and even division and then watch the plugin do all of the other stuff for you. Sports Bench takes care of accumulating the stats you enter as well as the standings and schedules.
The plugin has the ability to display the standings, a scoreboard of all game for the current season and statistical leaderboards. Show off game stats next to a recap of a game. Easily create pages for teams and players. And shortcodes allow you to show game, player or team information in any post. And if you use the Sports Bench theme, all of this comes with minimal front-end coding work for you. You have enough to worry about with managing your sports league; let us take care of the hard part.
THEME
The Sports Bench theme is the perfect way to use the Sports Bench plugin out of the box with no need to add any code to make the core functionality work. The Sports Bench theme includes page templates for the standings, scoreboard, stats leaderboards, teams and players. It also includes the scoreboard bar, a featured post slideshow, infinite scrolling posts on the homepage and implements the longform post feature included in the Sports Bench plugin.
SPORTS SUPPORTED:
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Football
- Hockey
- Soccer
What Can Sports Bench Do?
Plugin
Team Page
Sports Bench makes it easy for you to have a centralized location for each team in the league with team pages. If you’re using the Sports Bench theme, this requires no setup. But even if you’re not, our functions and guides will have you setup with a team page template that will match your theme in no time.
Player Page
This plugin also makes it easy for you to have a centralized location for each player in the league with player pages. If you’re using the Sports Bench theme, this requires no setup. But even if you’re not, our functions and guides will have you setup with a player page template that will match your theme in no time.
Playoffs
You can now easily create playoff brackets to show who your league’s champion is. Create a 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32 or 64 team single elimination bracket or a four-team double elimination bracket. And the front end display is easy. Just select the playoff shortcode, select the bracket and watch it do its work. The display is written to work with any size screen, so all of your readers will be able to see who the true champion is.
Standings
Show where teams are in the standings with ease. The plugin keeps track of the standings with minimal need for user input. You can show league, conference or division standings, whichever works for you.
Divisions
Sports Bench makes it easy to organize teams via conferences and/or divisions. Simply add the division or conference and then sort the teams into them.
Scoreboard
Display upcoming, current or completed games with an easy-to-use scoreboard. You can create a separate scoreboard page with only the need to call one function, or you can add a scoreboard bar to the top of your header.
Stats Leaderboard
Show who’s the best in different statistical categories with Sports Bench’s stats leaderboard. Simply select which stats you wish to show and they’ll show up on the page. The stats show the top ten players, but users can load more for each stat with a simple click.
Game Recaps
Show off stats from a game in a nice sidebar area to go along with a post. It’s perfect for a game recap, where the text or even video recap can be in the main area with the stats off to the side. The recap stats are made to be used with any sidebar to match the theme you are using.
Widgets
Sports Bench comes with three ready-to-go widgets to display in the sidebar. You can display standings, the scoreboard and the leaderboard for a stat in the sidebar. The widgets are also created to blend with you sidebar to match the theme.
Shortcodes
The plugin also comes with three different shortcodes that you can use to display information in a post. In the post editor, click the ‘SB’ logo to open up a modal where you can select between a game, team or player shortcode to display information to add to your posts.
WP REST API Integration
JavaScript frameworks and the WP REST API are the hot thing in web development. If you’re creating a site that uses the REST API and any of the popular frameworks, Sports Bench has the tools to help you.
The plugin part of Sports Bench does it all for your sports league. Enter players, teams and games and let Sports Bench give you all of the stats, standings and anything else you could want.
The theme part of Sports Bench features a homepage slider, a wide layout, a clean look and perfect integration with the plugin.
Theme
Sports Bench Plugin Integration
The Sports Bench theme is designed and coded with the Sports Bench plugin in mind. While the theme works on its own like any other WordPress theme, it works best with the plugin. This is perfect for users with no coding experience as everything has already been taken care of. Simply activate the theme and plugin, setup the plugin options and you’re on your way.
Homepage Slider
Show off your best or most important stories with the featured post slider on the homepage. Simply select a category in the theme options and add posts to that category to see them displayed in the full-width slider. You can control how many posts are shown on the slider. The preferred image ratio is 2.56:1, with a relatively large image so that it stretches across the page.
Customizable Homepage
Readers won’t have to go very far to find your stories when they come to your website. In addition to showing your latest posts, you can also add tabs for selected categories so readers can peruse them without leaving the homepage.
Infinite Scroll
Your readers won’t have to worry about the hassle of navigating through pages of posts to find their favorite stories thanks to infinite scroll. Readers will just have to keep scrolling down in order to load more posts rather than wait for a new page to load, saving them time and frustration. This works on the home and archive pages.
Custom Header
Add your personal branding to the website with a custom logo. The logo displays on the left side of the top menu. The suggested size for the header is 200px by 40px.
Site Logo
In addition to the site header, you can also add branding with a custom site logo. The logo will appear down in the footer and can also be added into templates wherever you need it. WordPress advises that the site logo be 512px by 512px.
Social Media Links
Show off links to your social media sites in the header with ease. Simply enter the URL for the desired social media platform in the theme options and the image and links will automatically appear in the header.
Longform Template
Have a special story that you want to tell in a special way? Sports Bench makes that easy with the longform feature. Select the longform post template in the “Post Attributes” section of the post editor to see your story displayed in a unique way.
Learn More About Sports Bench
One of the best parts of Sports Bench is how customizable it is, especially the plugin. Developers will be able to do almost anything they want with the data. To help you figure out how to accomplish your goals with your sports website, we’ve put together an extensive codex with all of the available functions and variables, a great set of how to guides and demo videos. Click the links to the left to get started!
See the Demo
Want to see this theme in action before downloading it? Click the button below to go to see the demo site with the theme in all it’s glory. The demo will allow you to see all the features in action before deciding whether to use it or not. So give it a try!
View The DemoPricing Information
Plugin Only
- Ability to integrate the plugin into a theme you’re already using.
- Complete codex to customize usage of the plugin with the theme you already use.
- Ability to add more functions and other customizations to the plugin.
$25.00
Plugin and Theme
- Full integration between the theme and plugin with no extra work needed.
- Comes with page templates for standings, scoreboards, stats, teams and players already created.
- Complete codex to customize the theme and plugin to your liking.
- Ability to add more functions and other customizations to the plugin.
$35.00
Theme Only
- Nice, clean and modern WordPress theme.
- Full-width featured post slider on the home page.
- Tabbed post home page.
- Social media options.
$10.00
Other Documentation
Specifications
Requires at least: 4.7
Tested up to: 4.8.1
Stable tag: 1.2.3
Changelog
1.2.3 – August 3, 2017
Plugin
- Fixed issue with date picker not showing up on add/edit player page.
1.2.2 – August 3, 2017
Plugin
- Fixed issue with players not saving.
- Fixed issue with games not saving because of difference in initial sport in ‘Add Game’ and the database.
1.2.1 – June 21, 2017
Plugin
- Added better functionality for WP REST API routes, including the ability to group stats by players.
- Fixed strip slashes issue with player’s height.
1.2 – June 7, 2017
Plugin
- Fixed error that shows up in the standings widget and standings dashboard widget when there are no teams in the database.
- Fixed issue with keepers not showing up in the right spot in the game recaps.
- Changed the style of the teams adn players admin listing and edit pages to match the style of the games admin pages.
- Added the ability to create playoff brackets.
- Added an active/inactive option for teams.
- Made “Free Agent” a team choice for players.
- Redesigned the games dashboard widget to match the style of the games listing page.
- Added shortcodes to show the scoreboard, standings or stats.
- Fixed other minor issues with the plugin.
- Tested to work with WordPress 4.8.
Theme
- Fixed issue slider arrows not showing up and centered them vertically.
- Fixed issue with header covering up top part of post title in the slider.
- Centered the post title, details and excerpt vertically inside the slider.
- Tested to work with WordPress 4.8.
1.1- January 7, 2017
Plugin
- Added custom routes to the WP REST API for all tables.
- Added standings and games dashboard widgets.
- Changed the style of the game list page and add/edit game page to make adding game stats much easier.
Theme
- Vertically centered the post title and information on the longform template.
1.0
- Initial release to the world.
Licenses
GNU General Public License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Photo License
Except where otherwise noted, all photos in the screenshot are also licensed under the GNU General Public License. Copyright 2015 Jacob Martella
Social Media Icons License
All of the social media icons are licensed under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
Scripts License
All of the scripts used in this theme are licensed under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
Fonts License
PlayfairDisplay-Regular.ttf: Copyright (c) 2010-2012 by Claus Eggers Sørensen (es@forthehearts.net), with Reserved Font Name ‘Playfair’
PlayfairDisplay-Italic.ttf: Copyright (c) 2010-2012 by Claus Eggers Sørensen (es@forthehearts.net), with Reserved Font Name ‘Playfair’
PlayfairDisplay-Bold.ttf: Copyright (c) 2010-2012 by Claus Eggers Sørensen (es@forthehearts.net), with Reserved Font Name ‘Playfair’
Roboto-Light.ttf: Copyright 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Roboto-LightItalic.ttf: Copyright 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Roboto-Regular.ttf: Copyright 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Roboto-Italic.ttf: Copyright 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Roboto-Bold.ttf: Copyright 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Oswald-Regular.ttf: Copyright (c) 2011-2012, Vernon Adams (vern@newtypography.co.uk), with Reserved Font Names ‘Oswald’
Oswald-Bold.ttf: Copyright (c) 2011-2012, Vernon Adams (vern@newtypography.co.uk), with Reserved Font Names ‘Oswald’
Foundation License
Foundation is licensed under the MIT license. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
JointsWP License
JointsWP is licensed under the GNU General Public License. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
From the Blog
July 27, 2017 | Tutorials
Setting up support for different ages, grades and levels
Sports Bench doesn’t outright support different grade levels, but with a few adjustments, you can use the divisions and conferences to achieve your goal.
Read This Post
July 25, 2017 | Updates
On creating themes for Sports Bench
This hasn’t come up yet, but just to get it out there in writing: it’s perfectly fine for other developers to create themes that utilize the Sports Bench plugin. But there are few things that need to be followed.
Read This Post
July 21, 2017 | Tutorials
Adding the scoreboard bar to your theme
Almost all sports websites, such as ESPN, have a scoreboard bar at the top. And with Sports Bench, adding such feature takes only a couple of lines of code.
Read This Post