Blog from October, 2020

Hello everyone,

Release 3.12.0 of the Sportal365 CMS is live and it’s all about widget improvements.

The latest update of the system introduces an all-around increase in widget performance, as well as several new features that give granular control of webmasters and journalists over the content creation process.

What’s new?

Offset a position in Standings widget
More filtering in Match list widget
Widgets information prefill
Widget loader improvement

Here are more details about the latest improvement and features:

Offset a position in Standings widget

Release 3.12.0. of Sportal365 adds a new “Offset” capability to the Standings widget block. This new feature lets creators decide which team to display in the central position of a standing, and which teams to display above/below the team in the central position.

Adding an Offset

To set the number of teams to display above/below the team you have chosen to put in central positions:

Add a Standings widget block.
Go to the Preview details section of the widget.
Enter a team in the Pick team box (e.g. Chelsea).
In the Offset box, enter the number of teams to show above/below the team you have picked.

5. When done, select Save block.

The below image demonstrates the visual representation of the offset limit.

More filtering in Match list widget

With the latest update of the CMS, we introduce a plethora of improvements to the Match list by Stage / Round widget that offer more segmented match information for display.

Note that all improvements are ready on back-end level and will become available as new blocks to add to your posts with the next releases of the platform.

What’s ready on back-end level?

With the latest update, the system is able to feed the widget information for multiple matches. In turn, this allows webmasters to better configure the widget and show more searches for specific matches. For instance, you can display all matches between two teams (or more).

Team IDs

The benefit of using Team IDs is that it lets CMS users receive information for multiple teams, display all combinations of matches between specific teams, or in other words: get the whole history of games played between those teams.

Also, this lets creators filter matches by multiple criteria such as season, tournament, date, and so on. What is more, you can also set an offset limit and show, for example, a maximum of 10 matches for the tournaments you have selected.

Widgets information prefill

This is a new feature available for Articles, Videos, and Galleries that allows the CMS to prefill information when adding a new widget to the body of your post based on the information fed from a Football Connection you have selected in the Tags tab of your content properties.

Note that the information will be prefilled in all widget blocks that have a match (and team) selection.

How does it work?

To prefill information in widget blocks containing a match selection:

Open an Article, Video, Gallery.
Go to the Tags tab → Football Connections.
In Football Connections, enter a team (e.g. Chelsea).
Select a match from the Upcoming/Past matches suggestions.

Once you select a match, all information for that match will be prefilled when adding a widget block containing a match selection.

Note that the widget blocks you have entered before this action will be kept with the old information you have entered.

Widget loader improvement

The latest update of the CMS also brings tremendous improvement to the widget loader that increases the speed with which users operate the system.

Before, if you wanted to refresh a specific widget the system automatically reloaded all widgets. Now, by using a given widget ID you can load the widget you want without reloading all widgets.