After dealing with "SportsPress" for almost 10 years on GPL, I just could not continue to use it. It has not been updated in years and it was just a matter of time when it would break. For the past few months I had been creating custom plugins to put band-aids on it, but I finally got to the point where I thought that 10 individual plugins to patch 1 old plugin was just too much.
So I created a custom GPL Hockey plugin that completely replaces the SportsPress. This takes a very generic all sport Wordpress plugin in SportsPress and turns this in to a Minnesota College Hockey only plugin that can handle men's and women's teams.
My first goal was just to get everything working so I could turn off SP. In the coming months I will make more changes, but the biggest hurdle is behind me.
You will notice all new game schedules, rosters, player/staff/official profiles and little things all over the place. You can even click the new map tab on the rosters and see where all the players are from on the globe.
One bad thing... You MAY need to resubscribe to the Men's Hockey schedule.
I have tried to look over the site to find problem, I am sure there are plenty. So if you see anything just let me know and i will try to fix it as soon as I can.
SportsPress had a few side plugins and I had a bunch of custom plugins. In all, I removed 14 plugins for 1 new plugin. The entire Wordpress database dropped from 396mb to 329mb. Hopefully this new plugin works well and doesn't slow the site down. I have a feeling it will not.
The planning file/notes for this new plugin was 2800 lines long. The architecture itself was over 500 lines. THANK YOU AI for bringing this all together! I could never do this myself in a million years!
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SportsPress had a few side plugins and I had a bunch of custom plugins. In all, I removed 14 plugins for 1 new plugin. The entire Wordpress database dropped from 396mb to 329mb. Hopefully this new plugin works well and doesn't slow the site down. I have a feeling it will not.
The planning file/notes for this new plugin was 2800 lines long. The architecture itself was over 500 lines. THANK YOU AI for bringing this all together! I could never do this myself in a million years!
Too funny! Immediately after I posted this, the entire site went down. It was my host and nothing to do with the new updates, but it sure made me nervous for 3 minutes.
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“When your best friend is the son of God, you get tired of losing every argument.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
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Your dedication to this site is inspiring. I love it here.
I appreciate that!
I looked at other plugins for years and it was never worth making the change. I had the "Pro" version of SportsPress which cost $49/yr. Which wouldn't be bad if they actually made updates. There other ones out there that are much more expensive, but just not what we needed here. We needed something custom.
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I haven't re-subscribed yet, but I see all of the events from the newer calendar gone now. All I have are the reminders from the old calendar that I need to move to the new one.
I had to; but did so a couple days ago when you first mentioned it, all the entries in my calendar were gone.
Yes… The original request from a few weeks ago is still legit. That calendar is still going away. I was just worried that the new one needed to be replaced a second time. It does not.
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I haven't re-subscribed yet, but I see all of the events from the newer calendar gone now. All I have are the reminders from the old calendar that I need to move to the new one.
Yep. I had removed this coming seasons games from the old calendar and added notices/warnings to it that it would be going away. So you should be good to add the new one.
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I haven't re-subscribed yet, but I see all of the events from the newer calendar gone now. All I have are the reminders from the old calendar that I need to move to the new one.
Yep. I had removed this coming seasons games from the old calendar and added notices/warnings to it that it would be going away. So you should be good to add the new one.
I wasn't clear there. I had added the new one already (still had the old one). The new one is gone now, so I have to re-sub to the new one.
Just added a Calendar View to the schedule pages for both the men and women. It give you the ability to load other sports to the calendar view. This way you can see when other games are when comparing to those other sports. Those updates come from the other sports live calendars and will get updated weekly. This is why you only see the established times for Gopher football and whatnot.
I just thought it would be nice to have something to turn off and on for schedule conflicts and whatnot.
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I created a new NCAA Team/Tournament info page. It contains full team stats for the men for wins, losses, ties, games, etc. That data will get updated monthly. Also on that page are the Championship games/results and the tournament site info table I have had for a while. You can find that in the NCAA Menu. Still hoping to get more data on the women, but it is hard to come by. Just cannot find records anywhere for total team WLT and whatnot.
Team pages now have consolidated info as well. Minnesota
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Added an NPI Season Race tracker to GPL. Just click the "Season Race" button on the NPI page.
Season Raceis a full-screen view ranking tracker that shows the movement through a season week by week. Every team appears in a ranked list with logos, NPI values, and (on desktop) color bars that reflect standing. You can scrub the timeline with the controls at the bottom to jump between weeks, or hitAnimate Seasonto play the rankings forward so you can watch teams rise and fall across the year.
Select any team to follow it: that row highlights in school colors while the rest of the field dims, so you can track them as you scrub or animate. On the right, a panel opens with the team’s logo and name, season high and low for bothRANKandNPI(with dates), and a smallSEASONsparkline of their rank path. Select the team again (or clear focus) to unfollow and return to the full field.
The men's league standings page has been updated. It now contains a dropdown to load any season for the history of the BigTen as well as a history toggle button that gives bigger picture of the league history. Link to page. I will get something similar integrated on the women's side eventually. Still only showing only 2026-27 for them with no history.
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There is a way to build lineups on the message board now. You will notice at the bottom of the post editor is a "Build Lineup" button on the left side of the screen where you can find the "Add Reply" button. But this is only visible in specific area of the message board.
Men's Lineups are only available in the Gopher Hockey Men's Category area.
Women's Lineups are only available in the Gopher Hockey Women's Category area.
When you click the button a popup will appear. You can drag and drop your lines on desktop. Tap the player and tap the position on mobile. It will then place the lineup in your post. Like this.
If you want to create a power play... Just drop in 3 "forwards" and 2 "defensemen". YOu are able to drop a forward in a D position if you want and vice versa.
Should be a fun addition.
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