FFL

I've decided that re-inventing the wheel sucks. Therefore, as part of the re-write of FFL, we'll be writing it as a module for the phpWebSite platform. phpWebSite has proven to be quite a solid development platform, and their upcoming 0.9 release is pretty dynamic and flexible. I think it'll be perfect for what any php-based web application needs.

This past week phpWS 0.9 RC 1 was released. As soon as they release the final, or write a module tutorial to show it's stable enough, I'll begin cutting code.

FFL 0.7.0 has been released with the last few features left. Those include a "Rosters" page which will show complete team rosters all on one page. Also schedule page will default what is determined to be the current week. Other minor stuff.

NOTE that this will be the _last_ feature release for FFL under my sole development. Any future releases in this module will be bug fixes if bugs are reported.

We are moving ahead and writing a new FFL from scratch. We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first total open-source fantasy league engine. FFL will be that engine. Better than it was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster.

On Monday Mike Noyes (user mhnoyes) emailed the leaders of the four fantasy football projects to bring us together and come up with an application that would really put us on the map and provide a single alternative to the pay-for-play services like Sportline.com and Sanbox.net. Long story short, the ffl, openffl, and iffl projects will be coming together under the ffl project and starting from scratch to write a new ffl modular application.

We are still in the requirements gathering phase, definitely pre-Alpha. Needless to say this is a huge step for me personally and for the community.

And so now that the project is no longer than just me, I needed someone to help with project administration and Mike has graciously taken up the torch, so he is now also a project admin. Mike is a noted member for Sourceforge documentation and definitely knows his way around project management. We also have 2 new developers in Ken (webranger9) from iffl and Jeff (jfritz) from openffl.

As a result the 0.6 branch will be the last branch for the current incarnation of FFL. Moving forward we will have core and module sections, along with themes. We are still discussing a lot of the very basic organizational items.

Note that I will ensure a painless migration process for current FFL users into the new FFL creation that we give birth to. So I still recommend downloading FFL 0.6.0 and the patch releases that I will release.

FFL is a php/mysql website engine for fantasy football. Features include news, teams administration, player administration, divisions, drafts, schedules, standings, playoffs, etc. Automated scoring will be implemented well ahead of 2003 season, but not likely for 2002 season.

FFL 0.6.0 includes divisions adminstration screen. Other minor function and cosmetic changes were made. Also ffl-announce mailing list was created.

Muchos gracias to Justin and Jeff in internet-land for finding a couple of possibilities. I like Justin's find of Yahoo's free fantasy stats download via CSV file at http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/stats/fantasy.html. So now I have my source. I'll need to write up the import script and mapping script to map Yahoo's player IDs to my player IDs. Probably add a "yahoo_id" field to the player table. I'll need a aggregation script to total all the defensive players for a given team into a single "team defense" stat.

Anyway so now we can almost definitely look forward to automatic scoring for 2003. Obviously it hinges on the hopes that Yahoo doesn't discontinue the free service and doesn't change their format.

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FFL is a php/mysql website engine for fantasy football. Features include news, teams administration, player administration, divisions, drafts, schedules, standings, playoffs, etc. Automated scoring is not yet possible.

Version 0.5.0 now includes standings with customizable sort algorithm.

I couldn't sleep so I wrote up a HOWTO on integrating Phorum into your site. Phorum is a nice lightweight, easy-to-administer, open-source bulletin board package. Great for FFL owners needing to smack their own.

https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=12813&group_id=58416

Well SourceForge.net says open-source developers should "release early and often", and that's what I'm doing. New version 0.4.0 includes the "News" section, with the ability to feature players and teams. However teams logos won't be shown on the news display page.

Future plans are for news related to a player or team to be shown on that player or team's player or team page. My wife was yelling at me to get some sleep so I cut 0.4.0 without it. It won't be hard to add back in.

0.3.0 contains schedules.

Right now creation wizard will create schedule/playoff skeleton, but will not assign teams to games. That tedious manual exercise will be left to the commissioner.

Eventually I'll have to come up with the logic for a basic schedule system.