Calendar Add-on based on Topic Title

marklindhout

Hello people,

I have been using Vanilla for a year or so now, and it has performed brilliantly.

The website I use my Vanilla installation on is a concert listing, and although I know there is a plugin that lets you add gigs to the sidebar (Countdown Calendar), I would like to know if it would be possible to have a calendar based on the titles of the topics I enter.

You can check out http://nordbm.com to see what I mean, a gig is displayed there as follows:
[Bandnames/Event name, separated by comma's] - [date(s) separated by '+'] @ [Venue], [City]
So, my question was, would it be possible to have a list of say, 10 gigs, appear in the forum? Perhaps the Nugget Management plugin could be helpful in placing the list in a convenient location?

I am unfortunately no programmer, so I can't really make this myself.

Any pointers would be highly appreciated!

Mark.

Fyorl

Wouldn't it be more intuitive to instead have an interactive calendar? So you select a day and enter some information, once that's done, it will be marked on the calendar and a new topic will be automatically created for discussion.

marklindhout

Well, indeed a very good idea. It would also tackle the problem of some users sometimes entering the topic title in a wrong format.
But then Vanilla would need an adjustment to the posting-form, best in the form of an Add-on, and I don't know how to make that either.

Or were you suggesting I should use different software completely?

Fyorl

Well, either way it will require an add-on. There's no way you can parse the topic title without writing some extra code. If no one else wants to undertake this, I can give it a go maybe this weekend.

TomTester

@mark: Love your idea of the different tabs per month. Very smart. Gonna steal that! Check out my old proposal/discussion on 'posting templates', I think that could do the trick: http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/5659/predefined-posting-templates-with-markup-thickbox-stash/ JimW worked on it for a while, but I think he has since applied himself elsewhere (i.e. it has been abandoned).

marklindhout

@TomTester: Thanks! (Praise should however go the brilliantly flexible Page Manager add-on.)

@Fyorl: As TomTester remarked, it is somewhat similar to the idea of "Posting Templates", so maybe something can be done with that? I would be very grateful if you could help me! If you need (X)HTML for the forms, or something, please contact me!

Fyorl

I think I know where I'm going with this. It should end up as a fully-featured calendar extension. I plan on borrowing (read: stealing) some of the design ideas from 37signal's backpack. I'll probably assign a permission to it as well so everyone isn't able to spam the calendar.

Minisweeper

What ever happened to VCal?

Fyorl

What is VCal?

Minisweeper

A calender extension that MySchizoBuddy was working on...

Fyorl

Ah yes, I just found the thread. I don't want to re-invent the wheel so I'll hold off working on this unless MySchizoBuddy confirms he no longer plans to work on VCal.

MichaelPierce

I would love to see a cal addon, just saying :)

marklindhout

Well Fyorl, I surely hope either you or Schizo can make something cool! The idea you had giving permisions based on role is great, and exactly what I need. As I said, if you need anything from the design departement, you can contact me. (e-mail is in my profile)

marklindhout

@Fyorl: Is there any word yet on the existence of such an extension? Is SchizoBuddy working on something like my suggestion?

Fyorl

I have no idea. I think you probably know about as much as me in that respect. MSB is still active on the forum, I might send him a private message to see what's going on.

skube

I'm not sure what happened with Vcal...it seemed like it was almost ready for release months ago.

I think MSB having a baby may have had something to do with things.

A good working event calendar is something which is definitely missing from Vanilla. Fyorl, if you manage to either take over MSB's work or complete your own event calendar you will likely be a hero on this forum.

marklindhout

Indeed! Great Success! You will win my gold internet for the day if you make such an add-on :)

scubaguy

if anyone is up for the task the EventList version 0.9 http://www.schlu.net/ component for Joomla is a well written component that would be worth porting to Vanilla in my opinion.

marklindhout

Hmm, that seems nice... Are there any sites you know of that use that code? I would like to see it in action.

scubaguy

I've been using for a few years on my site http://www.yourtribe.com It has been dormant for the last few months while I work on upgrading the whole concept. If you want to take a look this link will take you right into the archive of past events http://www.yourtribe.com/index.php?view=categoryevents&task=catarchive&id=1%3Amilwaukee&option=com_eventlist&Itemid=10

circuit

i use EventCalendar for wordpress which is brilliant. http://wpcal.firetree.net/about/ you can see it working here http://www.copsandrobbers.net the excellent thing about this extension is that it generates an .ics feed which can be used in outlook 07, ical, google calendar and 30boxes. it auto-updates and links back to the site. the only problem is that we get a lot of duplication between wordpress events and vanilla forum posts, so a vanilla calendar would be very welcome.