Author Archives: Mike Walsh

05.23.11
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What isn’t in v1.6.605?

The major feature that I had been working on which I didn’t complete is the ability to generate a Jobs vs. Commitment report.  The Jobs module allows each job to assigned some number of credits and there is a setting to set the minimum number of credits each user is responsible for.  By default the system will use zero which means there isn’t a minimum.  In the latest release, when a user looks at their My Jobs tab, it will show the jobs they have committed to and sum up the credits.  If the sum of the credits is less than the minimum, an error notification will be displayed for the user.

Right now this message is only displayed on the My Jobs tab but an administrator will also see it when view selecting the Jobs action for any user from the Manage->Users tab.  I had given some thought to displaying the notification anytime a user logged in but have conclude that would be too intrusive.  I may make it an optional setting at some point though.

The one thing I haven’t figured out is how to handle a situation like we have with our own team. On our team we ask each family to volunteer four times (four credits) for the season regardless of how many swimmers they have.  If both parents are in the system (primary and secondary contacts) right now they would be erroneously flagged if each signed up for two jobs because together, they have met our requirement.

Reporting  job commitments versus user is pretty easy and I will do that in the next few days but I have also considered reporting job commitments versus swimmer so that both contacts can be accounted for.  In speaking with some teams locally, they require two volunteer commitments per swimmer so that is yet another permutation to account for.  In the short term I will likely only report commitments versus users and leave it at that for now and revisit it after the season as there are some other things I need for our season which starts in three weeks:  Results, Meet Entries, and some work on WinSwim/Hy-tek interoperability.

05.23.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.6.605 released

It took longer than I wanted and I didn’t get all of the features I wanted done, but I have release v1.6.605 of wp-SwimTeam tonight.  This release addresses a number of things my own team has been asking for, in particular with respect to jobs.  A number of our parents have asked how they can see which jobs they have signed up for and if they have scratched their swimmers or not.  A key new feature in this release is the Swim Meets report is now exposed to all users but the information presented to users is limited to their swimmers and their jobs.

  • Fixed bug when optional user and/or swimmer field count is zero preventing reports from running.
  • Added My Jobs tab for all users. User can now easily see which jobs they’ve signed up for.
  • Added e-mail field to user profile. Users are familiar with the swim team profile, easy to update.
  • Exposed Swim Meet report to all users allowing users to see their swimmer opt-in/out and jobs easily.
  • Added Dashboard widget.
  • Fixed quite a few minor bugs – too many to list!

This release is available now on the Download page and will be available from the WordPress plugin updater later tonight

05.20.11
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Potential Report Bug

There is a bug with the User and Swimmer reports which will manifest itself when either the User or Swimmer optional field count is set to zero AND the table where the optional fields are stored is completely empty.  I have fixed the bug and checked it but am not quite ready to do a release due to some other changes I am in the process of making not being finished yet.  The bug will also manifest itself when trying to export a list of users or swimmers as CSV.

If you run into this problem, let me know – there is a fairly easy work-around that will prevent it from happening.

05.17.11
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WordPress 3.2 will require PHP5

WordPress 3.2 beta is out for testing and with it comes several requirements.  The two notable requirements are PHP 5.2.14 or newer and MySQL 5.0 or newer.  I will likely move to 3.2 for wp-SwimTeam development once it is released and I’ve done some testing with it.  I’ve been running under PHP5 (5.2.14 and 5.3.x) for a while now so I don’t see this as an issue but it might be for people running on older web hosts.

04.22.11
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I like DropBox

I’ve expressed my disdain for a number of things, primarily Hy-tek’s poor SDIF support in this forum so I guess it is appropriate that I also note some things I find useful and work well.  DropBox is one of them.  It solves a problem and solves it very well.

A lot of swim team files are shared among a group of people and e-mailing them around can be problematic.  We’re using DropBox to share some of the files and I am planning to store our WinSwim database in DropBox so the Swim Team’s computer and my computer will have access to the same database file.  I am optimistic that doing this will allow us to collaborate on the meet line up and heat sheet process without having to mail files around.  I’ll report back later on how it works out.

In the mean time, if you want to check out DropBox (free for 2GB of storage), use this DropBox referal link and I will get some extra space as will you when you sign up!

04.17.11
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What’s next for wp-SwimTeam?

I have one more feature to add to the Jobs module before I consider it complete.  I have a request to be able to send out Reminder Notifications on a per swim meet basis which should be pretty straight forward to implement and I hope to have it done in the next day or two.

Once that is complete, I need to decide what to do next.  I have a couple of choices.

  1. I’ve had a couple requests to be able to import a roster into wp-SwimTeam.  I don’t think this will be too difficult technically but it does require a couple decisions.  Since swimmers in wp-SwimTeam are connected to parent or guardian users, what WordPress userid would the imported swimmers be connected to?  The obvious choice is the Admin user or user running the import.  Swimmers could then be updated at a later time to connect them to the appropriate WordPress user if/when it exists.
  2. Import results.  This has long been on my to-do list because the MacDolphins need it.  I’ve been working on processing results off an on as a side project (see Flip-Turn) with the intent to fold that work into wp-SwimTeam when it is functioning and useful.  I already have a lot the functionality working and the GUI will look familiar to wp-SwimTeam users but I have yet to tackle relays and really push the robustness of the SDIF parsing.
  3. Hy-tek/SDIF compatibility.  This is also something I need for the upcoming season.  Anyone who has read much of this blog knows that I am not a big fan of Hy-tek and their goofy checksum and weak support of SDIF.  Since it isn’t likely to change and lots of teams use Hy-tek, we need to resolve the data exchange problem.  This issue may be the highest priority for me personally and I’ve debated whether to build some functionality into wp-SwimTeam to try and resolve sharing data with Hy-tek teams.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  I try to incorporate suggestions quickly if I can.

04.17.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.5.579 released

I have just released wp-SwimTeam v.1.5.579, you can find it on the download page and shortly, via the automatic plugin updater.  This release fixes an issue which has bothered me personally for a long time.

There was a problem in the E-mail Confirmation code for both registrations and opt-in/opt-out.  This same code was used for the new Jobs module so it existed there too.  For a long time the confirmation e-mails were duplicated and if a swimmer had to two contacts, only one of them would receive the e-mail.  I have finally found and fixed this problem so e-mail confirmation should be cleaner and sent to the appropriate people.

04.12.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.4.573 released

This evening I released wp-SwimTeam v1.4.573.  It can be downloaded from this web site or from the WordPress plugin repository.  The plugin auto-update will also update to this release.  New and fixed in this release are:

  • Fixed bug in Opt-In/Opt-Out e-mail confirmation which duplicated recipients.
  • Fixed bug in handling Country when set to US Only.
  • Added Club Profile initialization based on State or Province in Team Profile.
  • Added E-mail confirmation for Job Assignments.
  • Added Job Options tab on Options page to configuring Jobs module.

Make sure you visit the Job Options tab to configure your jobs module.  There is still work to be done to report the number of credits a user has signed up for and to flag which users have not met the threshold.  Hopefully that functionality will come in the next week or two.

Update: This release had a minor update due to a file missing from the WordPress plugin repository.  The missing file prevented the Jobs Options tab from rendering.  Other minor tweaks were also made to the Jobs Confirmation e-mails.

04.10.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.3.561 now available

A new release of wp-SwimTeam is now available for download.  It is also available via automatic update from the WordPress plugin repository.  This release fixes a couple of bugs and adds two new features, one of which addresses functionality that was coded but never exposed correctly.

  1. Fixed bug in wpst_meet_report short code.
  2. Fixed bug in Add/Update Club Profile due to invalid URL field(s).
  3. Added showmaplinks option to wpst_meet_report short code.
  4. Added URL sanitatization to Google Maps and Mapquest URL fields on club profile.
  5. Added notes to use Google URL shortner for URLs that don’t validate.

I am not sure when it was added but MapQuest now generates “shortened” URLs when mapping an address, I wish Google would do likewise.  The URLs that Google Maps generates tend to be a mile long and full of characters.  My suggestion is to use Google’s URL shortener to generate a simple URL that can be saved within WordPress easily.  That is what I am doing for the MacDolphins web site.

The phpHtmlLib library which wp-SwimTeam depends on has also had a minor bug fix which I found testing URL validation.  This plugin can also be updated t v2.6.2.3546 using the WordPress plugin updater or can be downloaded and installed as in the past.

04.07.11
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Add Swim Club bug

There is a bug in the “Add Swim Club” functionality.  I ran into this issue this morning but haven’t had a chance to diagnose it yet.  I hope to have it identified and fixed sometime today.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  To work around this problem I am choosing “None” as the opponent and then adding a note in the description field.

Update

This bug only occurs when the Google Maps URL is used.  I am trying to determine what in the Google Maps URL the validation isn’t happy with and why the data is reported as saved when it is not.