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First, review the questions below. And then if they don't help, you can submit a Support Ticket to us.Category: Advanced Customization| # | Question |
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| 1. | When I try to save HTML to my leauge pages, I get an error that says "Error - Message Cannot Contain These Tags..." - what does that mean?
Answer: While we love the customizations that many of our customers are able to do to their MyFantasyLeague.com pages, there are certain HTML tags that can cause their league pages to become unusable. Those tags include:
- the start and end "html" tag.
- the start and end "body" tag.
- the start and end "textarea" tag.
And therefore, those specific HTML tags cannot be included in the HTML you use on your league pages. To fix this problem, simply remove these tags from the HTML you're using on your league pages, and then you'll be able to save any/all other HTML you'd like.
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| 2. | I saw a really cool feature on someone else's site - how did they do that?
Answer: Many of the more advanced customizations you might see on someone else's site requires an understanding of the web languages called XHTML, JavaScript and CSS. While MyFantasyLeague.com allows you to enter custom XHTML, JavaScript and CSS into your league pages to give you literally unlimited appearance options, we do not provide support for these web languages.
However, there are lots of other resources available to you to learn more about them, including:
- Our Community Forums - there, you'll find a lot of other helpful MyFantasyLeague.com customers who are experts in site customization, and would be very eager to lend a hand.
- An XHTML Tutorial.
- A CSS Tutorial.
- A JavaScript Tutorial.
- Your local bookstore, or an on-line bookstore, for books on XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS
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| 3. | I've got some custom code entered into my site, and it's not working (or does not look the way I'd like it to) - can you help me fix it?
Answer: While we cannot provide HTML and/or CSS support for custom code that's been written by our customers (or third parties), these tips might help a bit:
1. If your custom HTML/CSS was written by a third party, please get in touch with that third party directly. If you're having a problem, there's an excellent chance that this is a problem they're aware of, and have already solved for someone before, so they'll be able to solve it for you in no time.
2. If you've written your own custom HTML, you need to be sure that it's valid XHTML 1.0. One way to validate your HTML is the W3C (X)HTML validation service at http://validator.w3.org/.
3. If you've written your own custom CSS, you need to be sure that it's valid CSS. One way to validate your CSS is the W3C CSS validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
4. If your league web page does not appear as you'd like it to, you should first remove all of your custom code, and then add it back one piece at a time, until you find the offending code that makes your page appear incorrectly, and then fix the custom code in that specific module.
5. Often times you'll find some other MyFantasyLeague.com customers on our Community Forums who are eager to help with your custom coding needs.
6. If all else fails, and your league web pages are unusable to you because of these customizations, this detailed tip might help:
a ) Go directly to your For Commissioners > Setup > Printer Friendly page by clicking on that link.
b ) From there, if you know the offending code was custom HTML entered into one of the "home page messages", click on the home page message in question. If the offending code was CSS, click on the "Image and Other URLs" link.
c ) From the resulting page, if it does not work for you, just edit the URL of the page you're on by adding "&PRINTER=1" to the end of the URL. For example, if you know you were editing home page message #1 which caused the problem, you can go to this page, which gives you a "printer-friendly" version of the page (which eliminates the custom HTML and CSS).
d ) From there, you should be able to edit/save the HTML or CSS in question.
e ) If you still cannot edit/save the HTML or CSS in question, try using the web browser Firefox - it's much more forgiving of invalid HTML and CSS than Internet Explorer.
Finally, if none of the above helps, we can delete all of the offending custom HTML and/or CSS for you, allowing you to use your league pages again - just submit a support ticket to us requesting that we delete it for you.
A note to more advanced customers - if you're looking to really take your league web page design to the next level, and plan on spending a lot of time writing custom CSS and/or HTML, the combination of the Firefox web browser and the "Web Developer" extension for Firefox will save you a ton of time and frustration. See our Advanced Customization Guide for more details on how to use these two programs.
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| 4. | What "special" variables can I use in my custom code to make it generic across all leagues?
Answer: One of the more common pitfalls of custom coding for MyFantasyLeague.com pages is writing code that you can share with other commissioners, and have that custom code automatically apply to their league without requiring them to edit it. To achieve that goal, all custom coding you enter and save into one of the various home page messages can use the following special variables. The special variables are automatically interpreted for the current league context.
In other words, instead of hard-coding a link to http://football5.myfantasyleague.com/2003/options?L=12345&O=07 for your rosters report, you can "genericize" that link like this:
http://%HOST%/%YEAR%/options?L=%LEAGUEID%&O=07
The full list of custom variables follows:
%HOST% = current league host, like football5.myfantasyleague.com
%YEAR% = current year, like 2003
%LASTYEAR% = last year, like 2012
%NEXTYEAR% = next year, like 2004
%LEAGUEID% = current five-digit league ID, like 12345
%STATICHOST% = "static" league web server, like www5.myfantasyleague.com
%FRANCHISEID% = current franchise id, like 0001
%FRANCHISENAME% = current franchise name, like "Marauders"
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| 5. | How do I take my league home page customization to the next level?
Answer: We pride ourselves on having what we think is not only the most customizable on-line fantasy football league management service on the web, but also the most "open", too. What that "open-ness" means to you, if you're someone with some computer programming and/or web design skills, is that you can extend and customize your MyFantasyLeague.com league a great deal.
Advanced customization options include:
- Writing custom CSS to completely control all aspects of your league appearance.
- Getting access to "raw" MyFantasyLeague.com league data in industry-standard XML format.
- Using Your Own Domain For MyFantasyLeague.com Leagues and Content and Embedding league home page modules in other web pages.
Writing custom CSS to completely control all aspects of your league appearance
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the industry-standard way of controlling all appearance-related items on web pages. MyFantasyLeague.com uses CSS to control league page appearance (including our skins), and also allows our customers to write their own CSS to completely control any/all page appearance options that you'd like to.
If you'd like to learn more about CSS, you might want to consider some on-line CSS tutorials, or visit your local or on-line bookstore for books on CSS - Eric Meyer seems to write especially good books on this topic.
Once you've learned CSS, next you'll have to learn a bit about the classes and IDs we use on the site. You can do that by setting up a free trial league on our site, and then doing a "View Source" to see our current CSS files, including the CSS files used for each of our skins, to get a better idea of how to write CSS for your MyFantasyLeague.com league pages.
Alternatively, here is another approach that might be easier, allowing you to see exactly what classes and IDs we use on your league pages:
- Download and install the Firefox web browser.
- Download and install the Web Developer Extension for Firefox.
- Go to the league page you're looking to customize.
- From the custom toolbar that gets installed, choose the "Information > Display ID And Class Details" option, and you can see exactly what IDs and classes are used on any/all pages on the site.
- Where this gets really cool is that you can edit the CSS right on the page, allowing you to immediately see the effects of your CSS changes right away. It will take a bit of time to play around with the web developer extension and learn about all of it's features and options, but this time will be very well spent if you're interested in really taking your design to the next level.
Finally, once you've written your custom CSS, you can go to the For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Images & Other URLs page and upload your custom CSS to our site (or, simply enter the URL for the CSS file on your own server).
Getting access to "raw" MyFantasyLeague.com league data in industry-standard XML format
If you're a computer programmer, we offer the MyFantasyLeague.com Developer's Program whereby you can easily get access to raw MyFantasyLeague.com data in XML format. This will allow you to quickly and easily get that data into whatever programming environment you're most comfortable, be it PHP, ASP, Excel, Java, Perl, or any other programming language that's capable of reading XML files. This page
offers details of exactly what XML documents we offer via this service. For some examples of what others have done using our XML feed, see this FAQ
Using Your Own Domain For MyFantasyLeague.com Leagues and Content
All home page modules are "embeddable" - meaning, you can place "live" MyFantasyLeague.com content inside web pages on another web site, your "My Google" customized home page, or inside arbitrary HTML on your MyFantasyLeague.com-hosted pages. Check out the "Reports > League > Embed League Data" page available from all league pages to see how this option works. For examples of what some of our more creative customers have done with this feature, see http://uffle.com/
Some customers have set up a "framed" web sites to give their leagues a personalized home page URL - see http://www.milfleague.com/ for an example of this.
If you'd like to have your own custom domain name, but not have any actual content on your site, you can do what http://www.returnofthechampions.com/ has done, which issues an HTTP "redirect" to their real league home page on MyFantasyLeague.com.
If you have any suggestions, questions or comments about any of the programs mentioned here, we'd love to hear your feedback on via your "Help > Help Center" page.
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| 6. | My league home page takes a long time to download (or doesn't download at all) - what's wrong?
Answer: While MyFantasyLeague.com offers a ton of customization options, extensive customization of your league home page can have two very undesirable side-effects:
1 ) Adding a ton of customization to your league home page can cause your league pages to take a really long time to download to your computer. So, you need to decide what's more important to you - having a lot of custom content on your league home page, or having a fast-to-download league home page.
2 ) Adding customization to your league home page that's hosted on a third-party site may cause your home page to not download at all if that third party site is having problems.
So, before adding customization to your league home page, please be sure that you fully understand the above two relatively major down-sides of your customization efforts.
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| 7. | What kinds of programs have third parties written using your Developer's Program?
Answer: Due to our Developer's Program, we've had literally dozens of folks use our API to write third party apps to extend the functionality of MyFantasyLeague.com. Here's a partial list of these third party applications.
- Several iPhone and iPad apps for accessing your MyFantasyLeague.com leagues
- Some Android apps for accessing your MyFantasyLeague.com leagues.
- A Windows Phone app for accessing your MyFantasyLeague.com leagues.
- A Blackberry app for accessing your MyFantasyLeague.com leagues.
- FantasySharks.com - lineup coach and draft coach to guide you through those tough weekly lineup and draft-day decisions.
- Draft Predictor for Windows
- Cheat Sheet Wizard - the easist way to nail your draft.
- Fandraft.com - allows you to hold your in-person draft, and then upload your draft results to your MyFantasyLeague.com league.
- Advanced Sports Logic The Machine - Football 2003 is the most advanced draft and in-season advisory tool available. Try it now free!
- MFLHistory.com - more detailed league history reporting.
- PickEmFirst.com - to find free agents in this league fast - works on any web site!
- MockDraftCentral.com - upload your draft results to your MyFantasyLeague.com league after your draft is over.
- FFToday.com's MFL Power - stats, rankings, projections, news and more.
- Habman's Apps - a ton of dynamic, flexible functionality can be added to your MFL league home page.
- LeagueSafe.com - makes managing your league finances easy!
- FootballGuys.com - one of the premier content sites on the web offers the Rate My Team application - available from any franchise's home page, this app will allow you to immediately have your team rated, and the Draft Dominator helps with your draft-day preparations.
- Big Time Fantasy Sports - FATbox makes running your auction a piece of cake!
- FantasyAlarm.com - text and email alerts to your phone.
- Fantasymojo.com's Colored Draft Grid
- 4for4.com's ADP Draft Planner
- Draft Analyzer - the ultimate draft analysis tool.
- This Drupal Project
- Ranking Slash for Fantasy Football - customizes the FootballGuys.com player rankings to show who is available in each of your MyFantasyLeague.com leagues.
If your favorite app isn't listed here, please let us know!
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| 8. | How do I use the RSS Feed page?
Answer: This screen allows you to get an RSS Feed of your key league data. RSS is a web feed
which allows you to get electronic news delivered to you in an industry-standard format.
To obtain an RSS Feed you can:
| • | Click on the "Add To Google" button if you already have a Google account |
| • | Click on the "My Yahoo" button if you already have a Yahoo!" account |
| • | Copy the URL if you're using another RSS reader, and paste that URL into your RSS reader. |
Your league RSS feed will include:
1. Your league standings.
2. Current week's live scoring summary.
3. Most recent completed week's weekly results.
4. A summary of the 5 most recent league message board posts.
To Include Your RSS Feed Into Your Facebook Profile
| 1. | Copy your league's RSS URL above. |
| 2. | Log into your Facebook account |
| 3. | On the left-hand side of your page, you'll see a list of "Applications" - find the "Notes" application, and click on that. |
| 4. | On the right-hand side of that page, you'll see a link that says "Import A Blog" - click on that link. |
| 5. | Paste your RSS URL into the field on that page, check the disclaimer checkbox, and press the "Start Importing" button. |
| 6. | In the upper-right hand corner of the next page, click on the "Confirm Import" button, and you'll be good to go! |
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| 9. | How do I embed a MyFantasyLeague.com Widget on another web page?
Answer: This page allows you to embed your league home page modules into other web sites, including your personalized Google or Facebook home page.
You have three locations to choose from to embed your league data.
| • | MyFantasyLeague.com Hosted Page |
Select one of the above locations and then choose a MyFantasyLeague.com Module from the list of available modules. Then press the "Generate Code" button.
From the resulting page you will either click the button to "Add to Google" if the Google Home Page was selected, otherwise the necessary code will generate for you to copy/paste this module into either a MyFantasyLeague.com home page message or another personalized web page.
NOTE: You must know HTML in order to use the "In a MyFantasyLeague.com home page." and "In another web page." options on this page.
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| 10. | Can I write a live draft client to interface with MyFantasyLeague.com's native live draft?
Answer: Yes! If you're a developer who is familiar with our developer's program, the following tips will allow you to write an application that would interface directly with the MyFantasyLeague.com live draft, allowing your application to make picks to an MFL live draft, and follow along with the rest of the draft as it progresses on the MFL site.
Your application will need to be able to read one or more of the the following XML files on a regular basis (preferably every 5 seconds or so to give the customer a near-real-time experience):
1 ) http://www.myfantasyleague.com/fflnetdynamic2003/_LEAGUE_draft_results.xml - an XML file containing the current league draft order, including any picks made so far.
2 ) http://www.myfantasyleague.com/fflnetdynamic2003/_LEAGUE_draft_status.xml - an XML file containing various status messages - for example, if a draft pick did not go through, why it was not allowed. This file might not exist at the beginning of a draft, so your program needs to properly handle a 404 (page not found) response from our server for this file.
3 ) http://www.myfantasyleague.com/fflnetdynamic2003/_chat.xml - an XML file containing the latest league chat messages posted to the live draft room. This file might not exist if no chat messages have been written to your league, so your program needs to properly handle a 404 (page not found) response from our server for this file.
The above files are all that is needed to write an application that offers a real-time view into an MFL draft. To allow a customer to actually make draft picks from your application, you'll need the following information.
1 ) Establish a session to the MyFantasyLeague.com league in question following the "Login Required" instructions available on this page.
2 ) Make a call to the URL http://football.myfantasyleague.com/2003/live_chat?L=&PLAYER_PICK=player_id&XML=1 where player_id is the player id to select.
3 ) If the pick is successful, the _LEAGUE_draft_results.xml file will be updated with the pick. If the pick is unsuccessful, the _LEAGUE_draft_status.xml file will be updated with the reason why the pick did not go through.
Finally, to allow customers to write chat messages to the league, you'd need to establish a session to the site following the "Login Required" instructions available on this page, and then call a URL in this format:
http://football.myfantasyleague.com/2003/chat_save?L=&MESSAGE=url+encoded+message+to+post
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