Before you do anything, back up your WordPress database! It’s really not hard to do.  Get the WP DB Backup plugin if you don’t already have it.

Installation should be very easy — if you have an up-to-date version of WordPress running on your site, finding and installing plugins is almost TOO easy!

1. Log in to the Admin control panel
2. From the “Plugins” menu, select “Add New”

   

3. Search for the term “Crossfit” and you’ll find my plugin (“FireBreather Benchmarks”)
4. Click “Install”  — now, how hard was that?
5. After installation is complete, click on “Activate Plugin”.

   

6. This will activate the “Firebreather Benchmarks” plugin, but NOT the Scoreboard plugin.  Activation of the Scoreboard plugin is optional. To activate the Scoreboard plugin, go to the “Installed Plugins” page and find “Firebreather Scoreboard” in the “Inactive Plugins” list near the bottom of the page.  Click on “Activate” and you’re done.

   

7. To manage the benchmark workouts and athlete performance data, click on the appropriate link under the “Tools” menu.

   

   From the admin pages, benchmark workouts can be added, modified, or deleted (although deleting a benchmark workout is really not advisable).  Same thing with athlete performance data.

To show a benchmark workout on your post or page, click on the Kettlebell icon in the editor.

Now just select the workout that you want to show.  If the workout has an associated picture or background story (like the “Hero” workouts), you can choose whether you want to show it.

When you click “Insert”, you will see the shortcode inserted into the post – like this:

This is all you will see in the editing window. The workout will show up, properly formatted, in place of this shortcode when you view the published page.  Like this.

Note that the standard workout categories are the ‘Girls’, the ‘Heroes’, ‘Other named workouts’, ‘Strength/Powerlifting’, ‘Olympic Weightlifting’, ‘CrossFit Endurance’, and ‘Gymnastics/Bodyweight ‘.  You can add your own custom workouts to any of these categories.  If you want to use a custom workout category (for example, using the name of your gym), just click on the “Options” link in the CF-Benchmarks admin page.  You can then specify what you want to call your custom workout category.

If you have activated the Scoreboard plugin (see “Installation”), you can display the scoreboard in any page or post.  Just click the Kettlebell icon in the editor:

Click on the “Scoreboard” tab and select your options.

Just as with the benchmark workouts, the shortcode is all you will see in the editing window.  The scoreboard will show up, properly formatted, in place of this shortcode when you view the published page.

You can choose whether your scoreboard will display “As Rx” only.  If not, then any “scaled” workout records will be displayed along with the “As Rx” records. This option may be useful if, for example, you decide to show two scoreboards on your site — one for Rx and another for scaled.  Just a thought…

You can also choose whether you want to allow registered users on your site (i.e. subscribers) to enter their own workout data.  This is only for web sites that allow registration (see the “General Settings” page in your Admin control panel).  As an aside: if you’re planning to allow open registration, I recommend the Register Plus plugin.

I am not a programmer.  Part of the reason for making this plugin was so I could learn how to make a plugin (this is my first). I will offer whatever support I can within reason to help people get this up and running.  On multiple test installations, the only glitches I’ve seen have been due to CSS weirdness with various themes (text size, colors, etc), and these issues are usually pretty easy to fix.  Post to comments (below) if you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback.

If you’re using the plugin, we’d love to see a link — post to comments!

Due Credit

As I mentioned above, this plugin is all “on-the-job training” for me.  A lot of the learning process for me came from studying and modifying (euphemism for plagiarizing?) the code from some other great plugins.  These plugins were a major source of inspiration/education for me, and are highly recommended:

• Quotes Collection by Srini G.  This is the plugin that displays all those random quotes that you see in our footer.
• Clean Archives Reloaded by Viper007Bond.  Used on our archives page; gave me the idea of using the show/hide effect on the scoreboard.
• NextGEN Gallery by Alex Rabe.  A great gallery, which we use to maintain our “featured pics” page.

Why is there a compelling need for a plugin like mine?  There isn’t, really.  There are lots of ways to track progress for individual athletes and affiliates.  You could simply post to comments on the main site.  Or check out LogsItAll, or Beyond the Whiteboard, or Statulo.us… and there are probably others.  Not to mention dry erase boards and paper/pencil.  This plugin just adds some basic record-keeping functionality directly to your web site.

Thanks for checking out the plugin — I hope you find it useful.

– Monty