Spring Cleaning at MyFantasyLeague.com

As long-time customers know, here at MyFantasyLeague.com we pride ourselves in trying to have the most feature-rich fantasy football league managment site on the web.  We’ve been hard at work on that goal for over 14 years now.

There’s a down-side to all of those features, however – too many features makes our site too hard to use for some folks, especially new customers who might not be familiar with the MyFantasyLeague.com style of league management.  Folks who come over from simpler league management systems, like Yahoo!, for example, can easily be overwhelmed with our site and our features.

With that in mind, what we’re spending some time doing this off-season is a bit of “spring cleaning” – cleaning up existing features to make them easier to use, and in some cases, deprecating certain features.  “Deprecating” is just a way of saying “hiding a feature from a new customer, but keeping that feature available to existing customers.”

Some features that we’ve already deprecated include:

1. “Offense Minus Defense” scoring.
2. The “Classic” menu option.
3. The “Stacked” league layout option.
4. Buttons at the top of league pages.

We plan on deprecating more features later this off-season, too.  Not only will hiding these features make the site easier to use for new customers, it will also allow us to do some clean-up on the back-end, allowing us to roll out other features easier in the future.

To reiterate, these features will still be available for the time being for customers who have upgraded their 2008 (or prior season) league to  2009, but not for customers who set up a new league in 2009.

As always, feel free to submit a support ticket to us if you have any questions about the features being deprecated, or, if you have any specific parts of the site that you find especially difficult to use, so that we can make the site better for everyone!

NFL Fantasy Files – Pick Me!

This video has made the rounds throughout the season, but just in case you missed it, be sure to watch it:

Enjoy your weekend and your offseason!

Owner Chat Abilities

When you create a fantasy football league on MyFantasyLeague.com, you are the commissioner of the league, and you have full control of all of the league settings and options.  Our philosophy is that the commissioner has complete control of the league, and therefore ultimately has full control of the owners and their abilities within the league.  To that end, each league has the “Abilities Setup” menu item on the “For Commissioners > Setup” screen that allows them to control the various functions that each owner is able to access.  By default, all owners have full abilities.  Some of the abilities that can be controlled include the following:

• Submit Lineups
• Perform Waiver or Free Agent Moves
• Propose and Accept Trades
• Change Franchise Setup Info
• Post to Message Board
• Customize Home Page Appearance

Depending on the league, there are times when the commissioner needs or wants to limit the abilities of some or all of the owners to perform these types of functions.  For example, if you want to disable teams from making trades during the playoffs, but only for those teams that are no longer in the playoff race, then you can use this Abilities Setup screen to selectively disable trades for just those teams as needed.

This week, we added another option to the Abilities Setup screen for controlling the ability for owners to “Post to League Chat.”  If you want to be able to disable a specific franchise owner from participating in the league chat, you can now do that as needed.  It fills out the other communication related functions that are already available on this screen, such as “Post to Message Board”, “Write League Article”, and “Create League Poll.”

Franchise Owner Home Page Customization

One of the most popular features of MyFantasyLeague.com is the flexibility of the league home page.  The commissioner can choose any template or skin to apply to the home page, and can select any type of arrangement for the home page by moving modules around the page and adding tabs to arrange the various home page modules as needed.  In addition, franchise owners can also choose their own home page layout if they don’t like the way the commissioner set up the league.  Each owner can use the “For Owners > Franchise Setup” menu item to select their own skin and/or to select their own Home Page Layout.

Sometimes, though, an owner can get carried away and change the page so much that he or she would prefer to go back to the way it was.  Now each owner can do that with a quick click of the mouse.  There is a new option on the “For Owners > Franchise Setup > Home Page” setup screen called “Reset to Commish View” that will remove all of the owner customizations and revert the league appearance to the way the commissioner has it configured.  This new option is in addition to the previous option called “Reset to System Default“, which removes all of the owner customizations and reverts the league back to the default layout of a brand new league.

So if you are an owner in a league on MyFantasyLeague.com, feel free to get carried away with the Home Page Setup and experiment with all of the different home page modules available to you.  Be sure to use the “Preview Module” link in the lower left of the Home Page Modules and Tabs setup screen to check out each module in more detail.  Then add the ones you want to see on your home page.  And if you ever get lost or create too much clutter on your home page, you can quickly start over with the default system layout or with the commissioner’s layout.  Enjoy!

Improved ADP for Team Quarterbacks

Now that we’ve launched our leagues for the 2009 season, we are hard at work making various improvements, big and small, to MyFantasyLeague.com for the coming year.  One change we made this past week involves the way that our Average Draft Position rankings are utilized during the draft for leagues that use Team positions such as Team QB or Team Kicker, for example.  In the past, since not very many leagues used these positions, our system wouldn’t always have enough data within the ADP Rankings at those team positions.  So if a team owner was relying on our ADP rankings to select a Team QB, it wouldn’t always have enough data to make a good pick.  Now, we’ve updated the system to use the corresponding individual QB as needed, so if your league uses the Team QB position, and Kurt Warner was the highest ranked QB in the ADP, then the Arizona Team QB would be selected where appropriate for that league.

So if you are part of a league that uses Team QB, Team Kicker, Team Punter, or Team TE as a position, you’ll now have a more intelligent draft helper tool during your draft!

2009 Leagues Are Ready!

We’re excited to announce that we’ve rolled out our 2009 fantasy football leagues already, which is several months earlier than most other fantasy football league management sites will start offering their leagues for this season.  So if you have a dynasty league and you are raring to go for the upcoming season, then you are all set!  Just click on the link at the top of your league home page while logged in as commissioner, and your league will be upgraded to the new season.  As always, all of your league settings (teams, schedule, ending rosters, scoring rules, etc.) will be automatically carried over to the new season for you.  And your 2008 legaue will remain on-line and accessible indefinitely for you to refer back to as needed anytime in the future.

We are also happy to announce that our pricing for 2009 will remain the same as last year, so you can save $20 if you purchase your league before June.  We’ll also have more details coming soon about our referral program which will allow you to earn big discounts just for referring another league to MyFantasyLeague.com. Watch for news on that soon, and enjoy the new season!  We have lots in store and are looking forward to another great year as your league hosting service.

Fantasy Football Trophies

Now that the Superbowl champion has been crowned and the Lombardi Trophy has been awarded, it’s time to start thinking about a trophy for your fantasy football league!  There are lots of options for you to consider, and we were lucky enough to see a ton of trophies on display at the FSTA Conference in Florida last week.  There were three different companies represented and showcasing their products, so we wanted to pass along the details in case you are in the market for a league trophy (as you should be if you don’t have one for your league yet!  😉 )

The first company can be found at FantasyTrophy.com.  They’ve been in business for 10 years and offer a very wide selection of different types of trophies at various different price points.  Craig from FantasyTrophy.com brought along about 10 different types of trophies, and he talked about their update service which allows you to get a new faceplate with the latest winner added each year.  Very cool.

The second company can be found at FantasyTrophies.com.  They differentiate themselves with a very unique, handmade product that starts with their own custom molds.  You can read all about the process on their blog.  Dave also brought along about 10 different trophies for display at the conference.  They even have a “toilet bowl” mold for those leagues that want to award the worst team in the league!

Titlecraft is the third company.  They are relatively new, and can be found at UltimateTrophy.com.  They specialize in completely customizable, handmade trophies.  Check out their web site for a video of the full story and then you can start designing your own custom trophy.

I can tell you that all three of the companies are very legitimate and their products were gorgeous up close and in person.  You won’t be disappointed if your league chooses any of the options that they offer.