For the last 10 years I have been making different football predictions competitions for my friends and it has always been fun. Therefore, today I’m going to show you how to create a football pool or sports predictions site with WordPress.
Video: How to Create a Football Pool / Sports Predictions site with WordPress?
Probably it’s going to be easier if you take a look at the video here below. In it I’m goignh through all you need to know about the topic.
Step 1: Install and activate Football pool for WordPress plugin
There is a nifty free Football Pool plugin for WordPress available. You can see it here.
So, go to Plugins >> Add new and search for “Football pool”. Install and activate this plugin and after that you’ll see a new Football pool menu on your admin sidebar.
Step 2: Configure your Football (or any other game) pool options
Go to Football pool >> Plugin options and first configure your plugin.
Scoring options
You can set:
- Joker multiplier – Multiplier used for predictions with a joker set. If the joker is enabled then your users can add the joker to one prediction to multiply the score.
- Full score – The points a user gets for getting the exact outcome of a match. This value is also used for the calculations in the pool.
- Toto score – The points a user gets for guessing the outcome of a match (win, loss or draw) without also getting the exact amount of goals.
- Goal bonus – Extra points a user gets for guessing the goals correct for one of the teams.
- Goal difference bonus – Extra points a user gets for guessing the goal difference correct for a match. Only awarded in matches with a winning team and only on top of toto points.
Ranking options
There you can set whether to set up automatic calculations or simple calculation method.
Automatic calculation – By default the rankings are automatically (re)calculated in the admin.
Simple calculation – The plugin calculates the scores and ranking for every point in time. This may take a long time to complete, especially in installs with a large user base. With this setting you can switch to a much quicker calculation, but without the historic data. With this setting enabled the use of charts is not possible and supplying a date to the ranking or score shortcodes will have no effect, these will then always return the latest ranking or score.
Other settings
There is a bunc more options to set up.
Prediction options – You can set up dynamic stop threshold for the matches. For example: you may change your predictions up to 5 minutes before the game.
Football pool layout options – you can set up whether to show teams, leagues, venues etc.
Plugin pages – Football pool plugin automatically install all the needed pages (matches page, teams, venues, groups etc.
Step 3: Create match types
This is needed for the tournament and usually it contains:
- group stage matches,
- round of 16
- quarter finals
- semi-finals
- final
If you’re going to import from the plugin example faile (described below) then all the teams are created autmatically.
Step 4: Create groups
This is needed for the teams you create in the next step. It allows you to set teams to the different groups.
If you’re going to import from the plugin example faile (described below) then all the teams are created autmatically.
Step 5: Create your teams
Go to Teams >> Add new and fill all the fields.
If you’re going to import from the plugin example faile (described below) then all the teams are created autmatically.
Step 6: Create matches
You have two options: import matches or create them manually. If you’re going to import matches then go to Matches and click on Import matches button. It allows you to upload you own file.
OR you can import matches for the next big tournament (UEFA 2020 for example) that comes with the plugin.
Also, you can add all your matches manually.
Step 7: Create venues and Leagues (optional)
It is optional but it allows you to create pages related to the venues. Also, if you want to use leagues then you can create those.
If you’re going to import from the plugin example faile (described below) then all the teams are created autmatically.
Step 8: Set up bonus questions
Your football pool users can earn extra points during the tournament with the bonus questions. You can add as many bonus questions as you like and you can link those questions to the specific games.
Also, you can set up bonus questions which has to be answered before the tournament.
Step 9: Add pages to the navigation / Add widgets
Since all the related pages are already created you need to add the ones you need to the navigation. This allows your users to easily access correct pages.
Pay attention that plugin comes with theses widgets:
- Countdown next prediction widget – this widget displays the time that is left to predict the next match (optionally only for a given team).
- Group widget – this widget displays the tournament standing for a group.
- Last games – this widget displays the last X played games of the tournament.
- Ranking widget – this widget displays the top X players in the pool.
- Shoutbox widget – a shoutbox allows your users to leave short messages.
Match results / Correct bonus question answers
After you have added your matches you’ll see that there are inputs for the results. See the image below.
So, after the match just enter correct match outcome (3:0 for example) and save changes. If you pool has set to automatic calculation method (see the chapter above) then all the ranking is calculated automatically.
Same thing goes with the bonus questions. Just open up your question and enter correct answer, save it and ranking is automatically calculated.
