After we stopped supporting the free edition of JoomSport for Joomla we constantly receive question weather we have the plans to build a free version of our product with basic features. As far as CMS market is moved from Joomla to WordPress blogging platform we decided to create such free JoomSport product for the most popular CMS, WordPress.

So recently standard version of JoomSport WordPress sport plugin became available on WordPress directory. It's absolutely free solution to build your sports web site easily. Std edition includes basic set of features such as:

• Single and Team type of competitions
• Chronologically organized Seasons that consist of one or several MatchDays with Matches.
• Team page with photos and statistic
  
• Player profile 
• Responsive and professionally designed frond end based on bootstrap framework

But there are some features that are available in JoomSport Pro version on top of that:

• Knockout type of Matchday
• Venue 
• Events for Player and Match statistic
• Extra fields for Player/Team/Match details
• Club

Check the full features list on JoomSport.com

Upgrading to JoomSport Pro edition is quite fast and easy, moreover all data is saved during this process.

We keep the development active for the new product. We have already issued three public versions, in the nearest future we will deliver 1.2 release with knockout match sets, complex seasons and some time after that - front end management and Match generator add-on.

It's one of the best time of the year and Christmas arrived slightly early at BearDev. On behalf of BearDev team we would like to wish everyone a happy holidays time!

We truly believe everyone deserves a holiday present, therefore you will be pleased to know that we are giving away any selected JoomSport add-on for anyone buying JoomSport annual license or annual license support period extension. Offer is valid till the beginning of 2017.

BearDev team is glad to announce release of renovated Kodiak template. 

Kodiak Joomla sport template has quite a long history beginning from 2012. Unfortunately it had been being our secondary product for the longest time and we hadn't been able to pay enough attention to it so the design and features became pretty much outdated. Previously Kodiak template was not responsive and the worst fact that it was not adjusted to JoomSport perfectly. So about half a year ago we realized it would be great if we can renew it to meet the latest design and tech trends. The team accepted this challenge.

During last few months our development team put in great efforts and now we are glad to share with you the results of our work:

• The new Kodiak template is totally mobile friendly, has responsive front end structure, it has passed cross-browsers and cross-devices testing so we are sure that it performs correctly
• Back End usability has been adjusted with new features: ability to assign logo, slogan, copyright, specify color combination
• Implemented original Sign in/Sign up buttons
• Implemented new high demand positions such as Slider, Breadcrumbs etc.
• Adapted Joomla Registration page and News feed page, so such pages will blend seamlessly into whole website design.
• Menu performance has been restructured and improved 
• New Footer design with separate blocks has been implemented

We are very proud to announce that JoomSport WordPress sport plugin version is already public!

The current release is open for clients who purchased the discounted license in our web shop and available for downloading in Members Area. The introductory price will be kept for a while until the moment we release the Front end management and Knockout features.

We have ported huge number of features into WordPress and some of them appeared even more flexible due to native WordPress structure and features compliance. Here is the main list available at this stage:

• Professionally designed responsive views based on Bootstrap framework
• Tournaments for single players or teams
• Seasons with adjusting Standing view, groups, score settings, color highlighting

Today there is variety of entertainments and it’s not so easy to attract new website visitors and what even more difficult is to keep visitors on the website. This is particularly true for sport web portals, intense rivalry makes owners to implement new solutions. One of the sure-fire solutions is Gambling. Gambling has been staying popular since pre-historic times of Ancient India, it lures people in all corners of the world at all times. By references to this fact BearDev team decided to develop almost indispensable functionality for entertaining Sport website visitors!

Let us to introduce tool for Joomla based websites – JoomSport add-on, Joomla Sports Predictions that has been just released and is already available in our WebShop.

The add-on allows creating prediction leagues and adding matches from JoomSport seasons. Once JoomSport matches are marked as played, users will gain their points depending on league settings and predictions submissions.

JoomSport Predictions add-on Features

• Enable predictions option for chosen JoomSport leagues;
• Set up point system for each league separately;
• Allows any registered Joomla user to make predictions;
• Display Users Leaderboard according to prediction results;
• Individually stats for each user;
• Provides simple and intuitive configuration.

Check how the features work on predictions add-on demo or read the documentation available.

The change log of the released JoomSport for Joomla update 4.0.19 includes many improvements and number of important bug fixes.

Welcome the new UI improvements - clear and accurate.

After number of similar requests from our customers JoomSport product team decided to improve the front end UI of all JoomSport pages slightly. We have removed the component border and the color from the component header. We also commented the back navigation link in the source code. Normally customers use browser back function for such action. If you still need it you can remove comments from code. New default venue image is added. Some other minor front end and back end UI improvements are also delivered.

So the final result - clear and nice UI on all pages that fit any Joomla theme in better way and are not overloaded with extra design items.

Release compatibility with new Joomla sport Predictions add-on.

Following our customer's requests we have extended JoomSport with special add-on that allows your site visitors to make match predictions and then to monitor who is the prediction leader once matches are played. This is just a perfect way to improve your sport league or club site visitors engagement. Add-on is available with 30% discount at our shop for a limited period of time. Special thanks to Ukranian AnimaUnity project for powering up this JoomSport extension!

Template override method.

If you are looking for overriding the native JoomSport html views and don't want to loose it during JoomSport updates, now you have this ability supported by JoomSport developers. The new method is described in JoomSport FAQ section.

New translations inside

At this stage JoomSport is partially translated in over 18 languages. The present release contains updates for Italian, Russian, Slovenian, Slovak, Polish, Spanish and some others. Are you interested to support us on your local language translation? Join our translators team in Transifex!

Issue fixes delivered:

• Team drop down in matchday CSS 
• Extra time score points counting
• Highlight your team in the season table module doesn't work
• Players from deleted season are displayed on team page FE for all seasons
• Player list menu item for all seasons cannot be created
• Venue address is not displayed on FE
• Error once you try to re-save Matchday with updated match status
• Sort by extra field doesn't work in Player list menu item
• Tooltip class name changed to avoid conflicts with 3rd party templates

Please download the new 4.0.19 version from your Members Area and install it on your website. Pay your attention that Season table module need to be updated as well.

Summer is great for all kinds of sports and it is especially suitable for outdoor activities, just like running, jumping, cycling, and … swimming, of course. Today we are talking to Michael Badulescu, CTO of Swisswaterpolo.com about the latest enhancements implemented for the national water polo web site by the BearDev team.

MICHAEL BADULESCU
Swiss Waterpolo, Chief Technical Director

BearDev: We know Switzerland as the country of a thousand lakes. As far as Swimming is greatly popular among Swiss people, would you say the same regarding water polo?
MB: Unfortunately, it is not so popular as Swimming, but we are growing slowly. Water polo in Switzerland is quite small community with about 1’500 licensed players. The competitions are played in swimming pools, so the numbers of lakes doesn’t help us a lot.

JoomSport WordPress sport plugin Alfa version is ready and submitted for internal testing. In the nearest future we will announce Beta version for public Beta testing, details about beta testing you can find on our forum. To stay informed about the WordPress Sport plugin development subscribe to appropriate blog category.

The first Stable release will contain almost all features that are included into JoomSport for Joomla, still some of them are postponed to the future releases to improve the initial delivery time. The second major release is planned for the end of 2016 and will include such major features as:

• Knockout type of competition
• Front End league management
• eSport settings
• player and team registration via Front End

Future WordPress plugin Road-map includes:

• Match Generator add-on
• Double elimination type of competition
• Ability to copy Season with all settings and participants

Compare editions page contain the full details about the features planned.

The change log of released JoomSport minor update 4.0.17 includes minor bug fixes and improvements, among them:

• Season standings layout - by group filtering fix
• Player images thumbs display improvement on Team layout (players tab, option with player photos)
• Season table module by group filtering fix

 Please download new 4.0.17 version from your Members Area and install on your website. Pay your attention that Season table module need to be updated as well.

We are pleased to announce that new version of Match Generator add-on is already available. Based on customers’ requests we have done the following implementations:

• Group Dividing. Now matches can be generated as between participants of one group as for all participants of the season (regardless of the group)
• Participant order. Check user friendly drag and drop feature for sorting participants before generate matches
• Minor improvements: Interface updates, language fixes, design issues etc.

Please buy the add-on in our web shop or download your copy from members area.