[Imc-oxford] OxfIMC calendar v2?

[owen at riseup.net]

Back in January I came up with a few possible options for improving the
calendar. To summarise, they are a bit of a bodge until we get around to
migrating away from Mir, or someone writes a decent regional calendar
system for Mir:
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-oxford/2009-January/0108-nn.html

I've started working on option 2 - a parallel calendar system on the OARC
webserver, loaded in by javascript. This means users can submit an event
just by filling in a form.

The old calendar would still exist, updated occasionally for people
without javascript, but for most of us it would be invisible; we would see
the more up-to-date content instead.

Have a look/play around:
http://ocset.oc.funpic.org/imc_front.htm
..It's not completely finished - I need to write an admin interface for
it, and prettify/CSS various bits. The reason this 'frontpage' is on the
funpic servers is to demo being able to pull in content by javascript from
a completely separate site (theoarc).

Also see:
http://www.theoarc.org.uk/imc_cal/
...index of same events on OARC server (needs CSSing)
http://www.theoarc.org.uk/imc_cal/output_old.php
...same events output for copy+pasting into old calendar system

Tell me if you find any bugs or security holes :)

I'm hoping this could be a short-term way of boosting user participation
on the site, not a long-term solution but something worth doing while we
are the process of relaunching or figuring out what next.

Possible issues:
-Spam: I've put an anti-spam field in the form, we'll see how things go.
-Security: I've been careful to remove any characters that could allow
insertion of js/html/sql. If anyone with an OARC login (I believe several
of you do) has time to look over my code, that would be welcome.
-Guidelines. We probably need to publish a set of guidelines about what
types of events we will and won't publicise.
-Limit. We should probably limit the number of events shown on the front
page to the 10 or 15 soonest ones and have a link to view all the rest.
-Moderation. At the moment it's set up to allow events to go straight up,
then they can be hidden later. That can very easily be changed so that the
default is hidden and moderators have to check them before they can go up.

In general, I'd suggest a relatively open approach with the possibility to
switch quickly to a more closed system if we encounter problems.

Anyway, I'm going to try and draft possible event guidelines right now,
since it's gone 2am. I was just keen to let people know now that it's at a
ready enough stage to show people.

Owen who has become noticably more tired during the writing of this email