Events Mod Discussion

One thing that I need for my website is an events calendar.  Now that Borg has added a Calendar to the Forum, I have something that I can build off of.

I am hoping to make it modular so that other than inserting a couple server side includes in the WWF code, there are no modifications to Borg's code at all.  Not sure if this can be done, but that's the goal.  We may have to comment out some of WWF's code, but I'd rather use a server side include and keep the event mod's code separate, which will make it easier to upgrade both the forum and the events manager.

Looking at this project, I see that it can become quite complex depending on how feature-rich its going to be.  I'm not impressed with other events calendars out there and I'd like to build something better.

I'm still thinking about how best to build it, but I know I will need some help in some areas if I decide to go ahead with this project.  Some areas I would like help on:

• iCal support.  If our events calendar can be published in iCal format, Google Calendar users or any users that support iCal (which most PIMs do) can import the events into their own calendar.
• Script to Create Table in Database.  I can make the fields manually myself and give instructions to do so, however, it would be nice if we had a script that created it for the users of this mod.
  

Here are some features I'd like to see:

• Be able to display events by location (i.e. venue, city, state/province, country, etc.).
• Members can RSVP for events.
• iCal feed so events can be imported into most PIMs.
• Display events outside the forum and be able to filter the results based on date & venue.
• A way to handle major events vs. subevents that makes sense to users.  Example: Carnival lasts for 2 weeks and during those two weeks, there are dozens of events throughout the city related to Carnival.  Probably the best way to handle this would be have the carnival as an all-day event and the daily events have times, and then display all-day events and events with times differently (like Outlook and Google Calendar and Lotus Organizer does).  It would also be nice if, when visiting the umbrella event, it lists all the subevents on the same page, with links to the subevents.
  
• A way to handle multi-day events without having multiple posts.
• A way to specify an all-day event vs. an event with a specific timeslot.
• Categories.
• Color coding of events based on their category.
• Display all-day events differently than timeslot events.
• A way for the user to pick which categories get displayed.  For example, if they only want to see Carnival related events, or want to see only Music Festivals.
  

That's all I can think of at the moment, but there are more, I am sure.

Please chime in with your ideas.

Mikey wrote: I'm fully into this idea and will be more than happy to help. One thing that always annoys me with calendars is they can sometimes become very crowded and overbloated. An option to display a completley simplified version of the calendar would be a must in my book, proberly using color coding and as little type as possible.

That's why I wanted to add some kind of filtering into it, where you can filter it so that it only displays events by location or by category or both.  I plan on using this for events worldwide, so filtering by location would be vital, otherwise there will be too many events!


Edited by wistex - 15 April 2006 at 6:46pm