PHP, MYSQL, INTERACTIVE EXCEL

I use excel to process a fantasy league, save the file as a text delimer file, then click import tubaler data in dreamweaver, clean up apply css to the tables, and then good to go. I don't know if this is proper but it works, if any one else knows a better way i am willing to listen

Why do they have to upload the .xls file?

Since they are using Excel, they can easily save the sheet as CSV file, and upload it.

And you can parse the CSV data via: fgetcsv

>This should be something simple?

Simple? No.  Using Excel as a live datasource is not a good idea. What you would need is something that would process the uploaded files, validate the data, and insert into your database. If you are adept at scripting, this is doable.

Is it not possible to have the end users update a form instead of uploading a file?

There a few other possibilities.For example, if your users can export the file as xml it seems pretty straightforward to use a process like this:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpexcel/index.html

How many users will upload? How many total active files will there be at a single time?