Road map for Sports Bench version 1.2: Playoffs are coming

It’s the middle of spring and that means it’s time for some spring cleaning.

That also includes cleaning up Sports Bench and releasing a new version of the product.

This update will focus heavily on the plugin side of things, with a few minor tweaks with the theme as well. The primary focus for the new version is helping out you, the user, create and display information. You should more time running your league, not worried about how to set up your website. And this update will help a lot with that.

Here are some of the features you can expect for Sports Bench 1.2 coming up later this month.

Playoffs? We’re talking playoffs?

Yes, Jim Mora Sr., we’re talking playoffs.

Sports Bench 1.2 will feature the ability to create and display playoffs. Playoffs are the pinnacle of every sports league’s season, so adding this feature is a must for a product designed for sports.

How exactly this will be implemented and how users can create and update playoffs remains to be determined; however, the feature will be designed with the user experience in mind. Plus, there will be how to’s and tutorial videos up that demonstrate exactly how to use the playoff feature. So stay tuned.

Redesigned player admin page

The player pages on the admin side will receive a much-needed facelift similar to game pages on the admin side.

Users can expect a nice, clean look both for the player listing page and the add/edit player page as well. Form inputs and buttons will be designed to match the modern style of the game pages and the listing page will be sortable by teams to make finding players much easier.

This will result in a much better experience for users.

Page shortcodes

Unless you’re using the Sports Bench theme with the plugin, creating the standings, scoreboard and stats page can be a lot of work.

That changes with Sports Bench 1.2.

With the new version, if you’re not using the theme, all you’ll have to do to set up these templates is add a simple shortcode in the editor. That saves you time and helps you focus more time on what matter’s most: running your website and your league.

Active and inactive teams

Teams of all leagues come and go. You never want to see it happen, but sometimes teams go away. The problem though is that the team either remains listed on your site or you have to delete it and all of that data goes away.

Sports Bench 1.2 will fix that problem.

All you’ll have to do once this version drops is click a simple radio button to make a team inactive. All of the team’s prior history, including game stats, player stats and schedule, remains intact, but the team will no longer show up in the current standings or on the team listing page.