Hello everybody
I had proposed Bloc an Extended Calendar for TP 1.0 Roadmap and he has shown some interest. Also it could be a module as FelBlog (http://www.tinyportal.net/smf/index.php?topic=6226.0).
He asked me what would be a typical use of a extended calendar.
Here is my reply
QuoteA calendar with extended capabilities would be of interest to a site correlated with activities. Aeromodelling as mine, sports, travelling, gaming with tournaments and events, even dating (out of my scope :laugh:). Big or professional sites will find it more useful.
More views are required, year, week, perhaps day.
Categorized events with custom names and the possibility to display lists of events per category by week, month, year.
Going further, calendar events could be combined, except forum topics, with aticles i.e announcements, report, results.
Others are interested too. I open this topic so everybody might add his scope and possible use.
Come on, let' s give Bloc and the Team a reason to be interested on such a project ;)
Just to add, generally speaking, any site that has emphasis on actual real-world activities and gatherings, such as agridoc's and WSA's respective sites, will automatically be more community oriented with added functionality to a calendar.
So, with emphasis placed on the ability of the calendar, it would give the ability for real-world connection, as opposed to just listing events on a monthly calendar, if that's about all you can really do with it.
This would be an excellent way to enhance TP, IMO!
I'd be quite interested in being able to categorize events. I'm switching from Invision Board and that's one of the few things I use in IB that I'm going to be losing with SMF.
I sure like to hear practical uses...its a bit of unknown territory still.
For my practical use... I have a fan site. The object of the fandom is on television (guest starring in series and movies) and has personal appearances. At the moment, with InvisionBoard, we can define events as "in person" and "on screen." It would be great to be able to have two different lists of upcoming events to match those categories.
Ok, another real-use scenario:
My site's a dance-events site, and being able to distinguish different TYPES of events on the calendar would be useful for us. I could think of several different tricks, any one of which would be helpful. Our current calendar (old messy ASP site, lots of hand-hackery) relies on tons of hand-maintenance, and slips fast if people get busy.
In Calendar/Events, I'd love a way for users to at-a-glance distinguish things such as:
- around-town versus out-of-town activities
- dance, versus other social event
- site-endorsed versus end-user-posted events
- summary list of upcoming "in-town" events (like a way to link to a "Around Town, Next 7 Days" listing).
The sorts of Calendar gadgetry that would get us there would be things like:
- view Events in a list -- next X days, starting at Y date, and optionally showing prior Z days as well (next X items, or next X days starting on Y date) instead of calendar-layout. I could then create a "This Week" button with the right URL behind it.
- Highlight, star, bubble, or otherwise note moderator-flagged events (for our "endorsed" stuff),
- Use different colors (categories?) for events based on which forum the event's linked topic was posted into,
- Allow use of Categories (In Town, In Texas, Nationwide, for us) and be able to filter the listing by category
Not all our posters would figure out the right settings, but it'd still be easy-enough for moderators to edit+fixup misfiled entries, with that kind of support.
A related request we'd considered was for RSVP'ing for events, since events that a few people say they're going to tend to generate "buzz" and others go too. A simplistic way to do RSVP's would be via a Poll, with choices of Attending/Declining/Undecided, but Polls don't list names (although there's a request for this posted on the SMF boards) and can't be posted into a topic with an Event (I think? at least not conveniently?). Posting a response to a topic has worked well enough for us so far, though.
Anything we can do with the calendar to build more community for events would boost our site (and activities).
I can't really say if this is territory best addressed by SMF core, TinyPortal, mods, or custom hackery, however.
Karl
Thanks for the input both..that gives me some ideas and aspects of an extended calendar. So..what i can so far draw out of these scenarios:
- categories of events
- type of event
- specially marked for certain membergroups (endorsed events)
- opt. linked to SMF topics/polls or TP polls
- opt. linked to articles/categories of articles (announcements/rules etc)
- event member-lists
- types( attending/ not attending/joining)
- newsletters/mail-lists?
Any more suggestions/ideas? I aim to make it simple, so by using these basic elements to the fullest, one should be able to administrate any kind of community event.
This might be the wrong place if so I apologize, but speaking of extended calendars or fels' blog, and yes Bloc's future gallery and shop options. I am reminded of a simple principle someone taught me when i first started coding let alone in real life.
Kis
Keep it simple
What you want is the tiny portal to be your expansion integrator but these extra features should be more like plugins IMO that can be downloaded separate. Not everyone is gonna want all these features in fact some ppl might get scared off with to many features as thinking... oh thats way to confusing Im not gonna try a install that monster lol.
Anyways just some thoughts on this.
not to down this idea, I like it very much along with several other ideas I have for modules is all.
I see this as a module yes, though it will be maybe be inside the package it will not be "on" as default.