Tuesday 8 September 2009

Community Calendar

I've been looking into the options here. My list of requirements were:
  1. Have a calendar that can show events in and around Plumstead
  2. Enable anyone else to also add and edit events. The calendar is owned by the community so anyone can add.
  3. Give a few bods admin control to delete unsavoury events.
  4. Enable visitors to narrow searches for the type of event they are interested in
  5. Have day, week and month views.
  6. Enable businesses to advertise and for reviews of these businesses to be added (thinking restaurants or attractions here)
  7. Enable visitors to turn off adverts
  8. Be web based so accessible irrespective of computer platform. Include ability for mobile access.

Events include:
  • one off events
  • regular events (like playgroups, toddler world)
  • club events (rugby club events etc)

Each event would have - date, time, repeat, contact information, map and directions, prices.

In the states,there is TownSync.com but it's in beta stage so I can't assess how useful it is.
I also thought the Council or local newspapers would have some sort of events' calendar but I found nothing of significant use so far.

I'll keep on looking but if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

7 comments:

Doctor Pangloss said...

I've wanted to put this kind of thing together to serve the good people of The Shire but our little humanoids seem to sap my every spare ounce of energy.

This would be an excellent asset to the community; a calendar and also a database of great family days out and local family things to do. Possibly a database of good local shops, businesses, etc but I am dubious of this as free advertising and it turning into a local Yellow Pages.

I own a domain name but just don't have time to fill it.

Good luck with your venture.

AJWInBlack said...

Great idea! I'd love to get involved if you get it going!

hilly said...

well, there's always gcal... sladegreen.com is i think a fairly good example of a localender done with google. it seems to be maintained by one conscientious figure who puts quite a lot of work into it i imagine. fair play to him though.

i do one for shooters hill, which is on the other hand extremely haphazard in coverage... my excuse is that i'm waiting for the maintainer of the Events Calender wordpress plugin to code for recurring events (in the next release allegedly!). it is however an excellent plugin as it allows an event to have an associated post too, which is useful if there's a lot to say and pictures to include, such as a flyer.

Plummy Mummy said...

Thank you for the feedback.

Hilly - your eshooters site looks great. Also used it to find the Plumstead Online Community page which seems to be what I am talking about: http://plumstead.ning.com/

The slade one is good too so if the POC doesn't work out to be what I want, maybe I'll give gcal a go.

I've been thinking of switching to Wordpress as Blogger has such a limited number of plugins.

Anonymous said...

OK, I am completely lost with the technical speak but I would like to see something with events, good shops, recommendations, nice walks, bus routes and basically anything else handy for the shire! i have lots of stuff i could add to it (well i could send you and you could add to it, i can't even figure out to get a blogging idenitity)!

hilly said...

hi!

thanks for the link! i joined the pip as well, but i thought the signup was a bit of an interrogation, enough to put all but plumstead's greatest fans off i think, although maybe that's the point.

if you are curious about defecting to wordpress, i think it can pull in all your previous posts from blogger.

Plummy Mummy said...

Hi hilly,
I know what you mean about PIP. I was a bit put off since I couldn't see who all the members were before joining. Though it seems interesting, its not really the events site I want to create. Also, once I did join, they asked for my real name which kinda leaves me with a dilemma as I want to remain anonymous as Plummy Mummy (though ASJwinBlack knows who I am in real life, I hope he never outs me).
I have started created a blog on wordpress but won't switch over until I'm sure it will fulfill my needs. In the meantime, I am also still exploring gsites which I might need creative help with (she casts a pleading virtual eye at Dr P and AJWin who are both creatives)