[Imc-uk-useability] [Fwd: Re: calendar wiki up for ideas]

[ionnek]

-------- Original Message --------

    ----- Original Message -----
    *From:* ionnek <mailto:ionnek at aktivix.org>
    *To:* Maria Ng (News From Nowhere Bookshop)
    <mailto:maria at newsfromnowhere.org.uk>
    *Sent:* Monday, November 14, 2005 2:47 PM
    *Subject:* calendar wiki up for ideas

    Maria Ng (News From Nowhere Bookshop) wrote:

     > Hi ionnek,
     > 
     > Yes, whoever does the liverpool calendar does it manually via the
     > admin interface.
     > 
     > For a local indymedia calendar, I think it would be best integrated
     > into a main indymedia calendar.  I guess I would envisage something
     > very similar to the Publish page form, with appropriate fields to
     > select/enter event date, title, venue, description, time, contact
    etc
     > etc, plus the usual tickboxes for Topic, Region, startpage/UK, and
     > specific actions, exactly as for articles, so that the calendar
     > entries would be included in relevant regional or topic pages. 
     > Relevant region would be pre-ticked if you were coming to the
    calendar
     > form from a regional page (and UK should probably be unticked by
     > default, since majority of events will be regional not national)
     > 
     > The calendar would certainly need moderating & maybe its own
    editorial
     > guidelines.  Since front page space will probably be limited,
    regional
     > admins might want to pick & choose which events appear on their
    front
     > page, and have there be a link to a regional calendar page with the
     > full list.  Maybe a similar model for the UK main page.
     > 
     > Essentially, a parallel to the newswire, only specifically for
    events.
     > 
     > At News From Nowhere I've just created a version of our listings
    page
     > which includes html   for a link back to each event as listed on our
     > website, for people to copy & paste into their own
     > pages.
    http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/noticeboard/localevents/htmlEvents.php 

     > I've done this principally for the benefit of whoever is maintaining
     > the imc Liverpool calendar.  (One disadvantage of this is that the
     > links won't work after the event date has been and gone, since our
     > website only shows events for the current and forthcoming dates. 
    The
     > link will go to our events listing page ok, but the out of date
    event
     > will not be on there.) (Hmmm, have just wondered if I could
    create an
     > RSS feed for it  - I don't yet know how, but it's probably fairly
    easy
     > .... )
     > 
     > An issue that I haven't yet got around to solving for the NFN events
     > calendar is how to include events that run over several days, and I
     > think you may want to think about planning how to build that into
     > an indymedia calendar.  My thinking is that maybe in the calendar
    form
     > people would to select (tickbox or other) whether their event was a
     > single date or multiple dates.  If it were multiple dates then they
     > would enter a start date and end date.    (for single date events,
     > they would be able to leave the end date blank).  That's how I
    imagine
     > it from a user pov - how the backend database works with that to
     > display events is another matter (that's the bit that will take time
     > when I try and solve this for the NFN calendar, I'll need to
     > restructure the existing database table for events.  Not necessarily
     > very tricky, just needs forethought to avoid cocking the whole
    thing up.)
     > 
     > BTW - I probably have lots ideas re useability, but I don't
     > necessarily know how to make them happen.  I can quite happily talk
     > about how things should work from a user point of view, but not
    how to
     > implement them from a techy point of view.  The NFN calendar and our
     > site as a whole is built with php and a mysql database, so I can
    talk
     > about how that works and aspects of that, things I thought about
    when
     > setting it up - but not how you make things happen on indymedia's
    setup.
     > 

     > 
     > Maria
     > 
     > 
     > 
     > 
     > 
     > 
     > 
     >
     >