FantasySP’s 2011 Summer Update

Before Summer officially comes to an end, I felt it was necessary to give you guys an update on what’s been going on.  As you know, I am constantly fixing bugs with the site and rest assured that I have squashed dozens.  Some big, some small.  But you don’t really care about that stuff.  So let’s talk about the stuff I’ve changed that actually do matter:

• The Sign Up process to FantasySP has been completely revamped.  While filling in your info, helpful tips pop up to show you if the data is valid before you hit the button.
• The “Sign Up” login bar has been revamped.  It’s clean, crisp, and much more eye catching when a new visitor comes to the site.
• Many new sources have been added to syndication.
• Player Page’s have been tweaked to make each category stick out a bit more.
• Support for MLB.com fantasy leagues have been added.
• The mobile site is now much easier to read with bigger and bolder fonts.
• Syncing a fantasy team has been tweaked.  After pasting your fantasy league’s URL into the text box, the site will instantly recognize the league.
• FantasySP is now hosted on GitHub.  The nerd in me just had to mention this because it has made the development process much easier for me.

I have a LOT of really cool features planned for you guys.  Most of them I am not ready to mention quite yet, but I hope to get them out the door during the fantasy football season.  One feature I will mention are fantasy transactions.  Soon you will be able to easily see the latest add/drops and trades in each fantasy league.  This should make keeping track of multiple leagues much easier.  I am working diligently on this feature and many others, so stay tuned!

Good luck in fantasy and expect to see more blog posts around the corner!

FantasySP is Even Faster

I’ve already written quite a few blog posts about how the site speed has improved.  I take great pride in how fast the site loads compared to other fantasy sports sites.  Over the past month or so, you may have noticed that the site has undergone yet another speed optimization.  I have done quite a few updates to the back-end of things, and a full geeky post about it can be read here.  I have also switched FantasySP over to use Cloudflare.

The bottom line is that  FantasySP has never been as fast as it is now.    The only thing that slows down load times are the advertisements.  As you know, we offer memberships to disable advertisements so the site loads as fast as possible.

Now that the site is fully optimized I can go back to adding more features.  Stay tuned!

New Feature: Tag Players!

Sometimes when you are tracking so many players it can be tough to remember why you tracked them in the first place.  Perhaps you added a player to tracking because you want to pick him up, but want to keep close tabs on him.  Wouldn’t it be nice to differentiate these players from the rest that you track?

The ability to tag tracked players has been added to FantasySP.  This has been something that was requested a nearly a year ago but has finally been realized.  So how do we tag a player?  First, we need a new ‘track this player’ button!

Notice the dropdown button on the right

When you mouse over the down arrow, you’ll see a new menu pop up:

How to tag as "scout"

When a player is tagged as “scout”, here is how it looks in your News Stream:

My News has a scout!

Enjoy the new feature!  I will be keeping an eye on how you guys are using this feature.  Down the road I may allow custom labels and add/edit labels to existing tracked players.

Specify the sources that matter to you

As time has passed, we have been adding a lot more sources that we collect news from.  We help you keep track of thousands of players from hundreds of quality sources.   With so many sources, we decided to break them down into categories and retooled our player pages to reflect that.

Due to user requests, we are taking this a step further by giving you the option to customize your player news notifications and personal RSS feeds by news categories. You are now able to choose to be notified of updates from blogs / columnists, newspapers, or fantasy.  By default, you receive notifications by ALL source categories.

To specify which source categories you want to be notified of, click on the “settings” tab in your user panel.

 

Improved Player Trends and Spotlight

As you know, FantasySP shows you the latest player trends going on in realtime.  Fantasy Spotlight gives the top 3 players in all sports or a specific sport for free users or unregistered users when visiting the site.  Fantasy Player Trends is a much more in depth view of Fantasy Spotlight and are shown on every page in the header.  If you’d like to see Fantasy Player Trends in action, simply register for the site and you get 14 days free.

Both Fantasy Player Trends and Fantasy Spotlight player trend algorithms have been improved significantly.  I can’t give away the secret sauce, but we are now able to detect trends faster and much more accurately .  Head over to FantasySP and check out the awesomeness!

Introducing Player Trends

Trends have been a hot thing on the internet for some time now.  Many major websites have their own form of trends: Google, Yahoo, Twitter, ESPN, etc.  I am pleased to announce that FantasySP is bringing Player Trends to paying and trial members.

Player Trends

Player Trends will be shown in the header, next to the FantasySP logo, on every single page.  Users who have decided to upgrade their account will see the Player Trends in place of banner advertisements.  This feature is to thank our users for supporting us and paying for a membership.  So how exactly does it work?

Player Trends showcases the most important player news right now at a quick glance.  You’ll notice that some names are grayed out while others are bolder and even underlined.  The bolder the name, the hotter the trend.  Iif you see a name that is underlined it is significant news.  For example, in the screenshot above you’ll notice that Matt Cassel is the hottest trend because it was just announced that he did not make the team flight and is ruled out for Sunday’s game.  Mouse over each name and you’ll see the player’s full news update.

I hope all our users enjoy this feature and expect to see more improvements down the line for this feature and others.

What is your Fantasy Level?

Today I am introducing a new feature called “Fantasy Level“, which is located in your User Panel.  There are a lot of things that you can do at FantasySP and sometimes features can get overlooked.  I wanted to make sure these features get noticed and dedicated users of the site get their recognition for sticking with us.

Essentially your Fantasy Level is an achievement rating similar to what you see in xbox 360.  Points are awarded for completing certain tasks, such as syncing your first league or visiting our mobile site.  Click on your blue bar to see a breakdown on which tasks you have yet to complete.  As of right now, there are 16 different tasks to achieve.

Down the line more achievements could be added; things like where your level ranks against other users of the site.

My Fantasy Level

As you can see, even I haven’t completed all of the tasks to get 100% on my Fantasy Level.  So, what is your Fantasy Level?

 

Player Page Enhancements

Since FantasySP first launched, one thing we have been trying to do is make sure that we collect news from the best sources around the web.  Three years ago when the site first launched, only 3 or 4 sources were being collected.  Now we have hundreds of quality sources and we need a more organized way to present these sources to you.

Over the past month, we have been adding local newspapers and newspaper blogs to syndication.  Not only can you get fantasy insight at our site, but in depth news coverage that only newspapers can provide.

Have a look at our enhanced player news page:

Jermichael Finley's Page

Sources are now grouped into 4 different categories:

• Blogs / Columnists
• Fantasy Analysis
• Local Newspapers
• Related News

We want you to get your news as fast as possible and the best way to do this is to remove the need to reload new pages.  You can easily click to the NEXT/PREV story in each category.

This feature will work in all browsers, however it works best in modern browsers so be sure and make sure your browser is upgraded to its latest version.

$100 Up For Grabs, Week 5 Fantasy Football

Think you have what it takes to beat the makers of Fantasy Sports Portal?  We have teamed up with FanDuel and are putting up $100 in cash that says you can’t beat us in Fantasy Football.

So how does it work?  Each team has $60,000 worth of salary to draft the best team possible for Week 5.  At the end of the week, the top 3 teams cash in on the winnings:

Sign Up for FREE and Draft Your Team NOW!

First place: $70,
Second place: $20,
Third place: $10

Sync Support Added for NFL.com & Foxsports

Just in time for football season, support for syncing NFL.com and foxsports.com leagues have been added.  FantasySP is the only site around that lets you sync leagues from Yahoo!, CBSSports, ESPN, NFL.com, and Foxsports:

My synced leagues

We have a blog post explaining fantasy syncing, but I’ll give you the brief summary right here.   Fantasy syncing automatically updates league rosters each day. Any players on your teams are added to player tracking so you can keep tabs on their news from dozens of sources at once.   We even show player eligibility in each league. Take a look at when I mouse over Eli Manning’s player icon:

Eli Manning is Owned by

As an added bonus, we recently added Fantasy League Breakdowns to show how well your team has progressed throughout the season.  Find out who the best team is from top to bottom from September all the way into December.  Because sometimes points scored and overall record don’t tell the whole story.

So once you finish your drafts, remember to sync your leagues.