Posts filed under 'General'
I’m happy to announce that the draft cheatsheet app that was offered for free at MFLAddons last season is up-and-running for 2006.
Basically what this tool does is take your league configuration (based on your five-digit MyFantasyLeague id) and display MFL’s DraftTracker data customized for your league (meaning it only shows positions that are eligible in your league). This doesn’t take your scoring system into account, and there are no guarantees that this will help you win your league. 
Also, since this is based on MFL’s DraftTracker data, it will get more accurate as more drafts are run at MFL.
Available here: MFLHistory Cheatsheet
Totally free for anyone to use!
June 4th, 2006
Just a quick note to let all of you know that I’ll be taking a little vacation to Las Vegas from May 25-28. You’re probably not all that interested in how much I’m going to bet on the Packers to win the Super Bowl, but this does mean that any new orders, renewals or support requests likely won’t get responded to until Monday, May 29.
Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!
May 24th, 2006
As of today (May 14), the ability to map your MFLHistory site to your 2006 myFantasyLeague league is now available.
You’ll see some new messages in the Admin section of your site.
If you are paid through the 2006 season:
On the dashboard, you’ll see this message:
and, if you click the “Import Season” menu item, you’ll see the following:
If you have not yet renewed your MFLHistory subscription for 2006:
The following message will appear on both the Dashboard and Import Season menus:
Please be sure to allow 24 hours for all renewals to be processed.
If you believe that you are paid through the 2006 season but the site is saying that you are not, please contact me directly
A couple of things to consider as you decide whether to map your 2006 league now or wait until closer to the start of the regular season:
- Team changes (different names, new teams), division alignment changes and season configuration changes (number of regular vs playoff weeks, for example) made after you map your league to MFLHistory will require you to “refresh” the season data and/or delete and re-import the data for the season
- It’s best to finalize your regular season schedule before mapping to MFLHistory — otherwise your GameCenter pages will be inaccurate until you refresh the games data for the season
- Finally, the only real benefit to mapping now is that you won’t have to do it later. The automated updates of game data obviously won’t happen until the games start in September
If you have any questions or problems with mapping your 2006 league, please use the Support Forum to request help!
May 14th, 2006
Just to throw it out there upfront: This is NOT an announcement of new features being rolled out.
(and yes, I realize that I said something like ‘look for this around March Madness time’ — I think I know now one of the reasons why the Sideline guys never talk about release dates for new features!)
But, I do feel like I owe all of you a bit of an update to what’s going on with the app right now, so here goes:
In a purely test format (i.e., test results in straight text format, not displayable on the site), I have some code working that will allow for a tremendous number of ways to slice and dice single game records (I simply started there since they’re the most straightforward to work with). With this new design, single game records could be shown for all-time, a single season, a range or group of seasons, a range or group of weeks, a single week, a single team, a group of teams, for division or non-division games only (conferences too), and for a specific set of game types definable by you. Some examples of what this new setup would allow you to do:
- Most Points Scored, 2003-2005
- Least Points Scored by Barney’s Bombers in a Week 6 game
- Highest Victory Margin in a Playoff Game in 2001, 2003 or 2005
- Most Combined Points in a Division game involving Barney’s Bombers
- Most Points Scored in Week 1
As this retooling of the MFLHistory “engine” makes its way through the rest of the record types (and obviously into the functioning site for display), it will provide all of you with an incredible amount of customizability over the records on your sites.
In addition, this is an important step toward the creation of team-specific record pages (see those references to Barney’s Brewers above).
In time, this is all going to be pretty cool — it’s just that it is, in fact, going to take some time — and more than anything, I want to make sure this gets done right, so it might be a little bit yet — but trust me, it’s coming!
April 6th, 2006
The “core” of the MFLHistory application is going to be undergoing an overhaul. The single most visible result of this overhaul is going to be a pretty major shift in the method you use to add new records to your particular site.
In the current version:
- The record categories are very specific (season scores, career points, etc)
- The number of available records is completely fixed (you have three options for point milestones, for example)
- You can customize the record title, number of records displayed, sort order, and (for some records) a minimum qualification criteria
The vision for the NEW version:
- A “record designer” will be added, allowing you to choose specific criteria for a record and “save” it to your site’s configuration
- Criteria available will include choosing which seasons, weeks, and player positions (for individual records) to include
- This will allow you to create a virtually unlimited number of record combinations
- For leagues that want to separate early league season records from more recent seasons, you’ll be able to do just that — you could have both Most Points in a Game, 1997-2000 and Most Points in a Game, 2001-present records, for instance
- For individual records, this will allow you to combine positions that changed in the MFL setup (e.g., combining current DEF and previous TM positions into one Defensive Team category, or creating a top 5 scores, RB, WR, TE record)
- Of course, you’ll still be able to customize the display order, number to show, and title like you can today
- This designer functionality will be the engine that powers season and career individual player records, so you won’t see any movement on that prior to this feature
I can’t tell you the timeline on these changes (although to keep the pressure on myself, I’ll mention that NCAA BB Tourney time would be a good target), since as of right now they exist in my head and as notes on a pad of paper. There WILL be a testing period before this functionality obsoletes the current setup, and I’ll probably be looking for a few of you to help put it through some testing.
As always, if you have comments or suggestions around this conceptualization, please feel free to add them to the comments here!
February 19th, 2006
In probably the least exciting update on this site in a while, I’ve moved this blog to a separate server from the MFLHistory site. This idea is obviously generated by what Sideline does, but I think it makes a lot of sense: now if the records site goes down, this site will still be up (and vice versa).
Next up will be a move of the forums, then next weekend, I am actually planning to move the entire MFLHistory site to a new web host. (I’ll let you know when this is happening exactly, and will probably shut down the history site admin panels during the move)
Oh, and is anyone actually watching the Pro Bowl? Me, I’m watching Olympic events that happened like, 10 hours ago.
February 12th, 2006
Upon realizing that it was going to be next to impossible to logically track feature requests in the blog comments area here, I’ve set up a support forum.
At the moment, it’s pretty much empty, but I’m going to see what I can do about posting support questions that have already come up and enhancement ideas in it.
You will need to register before you can post anything in the forum, and there’s a little bit of ugliness right now because the icons are in a blue/gray color scheme, but hopefully this will help the user community of MFLHistory support to share ideas and support!
P.S. I’m still going to keep this blog alive, since I think it will allow me to post overall news and some topics for comment more easily than the forum.
January 9th, 2006
I’m trying to determine the best way to use this ‘blog’ to support the ongoing development of the MFLHistory program, but one of the things I’d like to do is use it to let you in on some of the ongoing development work on the app, and maybe to throw some questions out there for discussion time and again.
One thing I’d welcome feedback on is whether you think that something like the setup of this blog is sufficient for ongoing support purposes, or whether it would be helpful to have a more traditional forum in place as well. Leave a comment to give me your feedback!
Current Development
My current plan is to have version 1.5 of MFLHistory ready to go at the end of January. What’s so great that it warrants a v1.5 designation? Well, it’s finally time to get Individual Player records up-and-running in this thing. Right now, the following types of records are probably what I’ll be looking to include:
- Most Points by a Starter – single game (both by any position, and with an option to display top scores by position)
- Most Points by a Bench Player – single game (overall + by position)
- Most Starter Points – single season (overall + by position)
- Most Starter Points – career (overall + by position)
I’d love some feedback: I’d really like to hear what you think regarding individual player records. For example, right now, the MFLHistory database is only storing “roster” player scores (in an attempt to keep the database size in control). That means that the data isn’t there right now to include points scored by a player while they were a free agent. There are probably two ways to look at this: (1) Counting scores only when a player is actively on a team is fine, because for that league, those are the only true points that player accumulated, or (2) I want to see the total points scored by a player regardless of whether they were on a roster or not — that way I can fully appreciate the career scoring total for a particular player.
What do you think?
In addition to individual player records:
I’m also planning to enhance the Admin facility as it pertains to importing seasons manually. Specifically, I want to allow a league that has summary information (e.g., final W-L records), but no detailed game-by-game history, to be able to enter those summaries and have them included in season and career records.
Last, but not least, I’d also like to include an initial version of Franchise Ratings in this release. Franchise Ratings would look something like this. This feature will take some tweaking since I have no idea how well the formula will hold up across other leagues.
So, there you have it. Some plans for this month. One or two of these things might be released a little before the end of the month, but expect the “official” 1.5 release by the end of the month.
Finally, a quick note — you can use the Subscribe option to sign up to receive an email every time this site is updated. Please note that your email will never be sold or otherwise distributed to any advertisers or other third parties. It will be used only for purposes of updating you regarding the MFLHistory.com site.
January 8th, 2006
Welcome to the blog for the MFLHistory.com site!
In time, this will become the home for all information regarding the League History application that began as an offering of MFLAddons.
I’ll try to post future plans, frequently asked support questions and other product news here!
Note: I’m importing some old posts from the MFLAddons forum here and giving them the dates that they were posted there, so it looks like there are posts older than this blog. Just wanted to explain that!
Feel free to post comments on any of the posts here — there is a moderation process that they’ll need to go through the first time you post (to prevent spam).
To Purchase League History, use the Purchase! menu item in the header. Currently, PayPal is the only allowed method of payment.
January 2nd, 2006
The original announcement
- League History currently includes 5 different record types:
- Single Game
- Single Season
- Postseason
- Career
- Milestones
- More records and other features will be added throughout the season (at no additional charge)
- League History will import your games automatically each week from MyFantasyLeague
- Like MyFantasyLeague, League History is built using a CSS design, so you can “re-skin” it as you wish!
- League History is a “per season” product, meaning you will need to renew in 2006 to continue adding new games to your League History site
- The standard price is $19.95 per season
August 10th, 2005