Hello Allen and Dave and Josh and all the gang!
Dave...this post should be of interest to you. I think we've discussed this stuff for a few YEARS now!
Most of you have known me for the past few years (on the old W3T boards) and know I'm always coming up with wild ideas on how to use the basecode for UBBT to do stuff other than simple message posting.
I may be off in right field here, but I thought I'd post this idea I'm mentally working out and we will be building on the Texas Offroad Network sometime over the next months...and see if you guys can point out flaws and fubars....or offer additional ideas to make it better.
Sorry if I'm being long winded....as usual for me....
....but this is a huge idea to put on paper (so to speak)....
I will post our "Wish List" on this first posting....
I will post "The Idea" on the one below....
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We all know the dilema facing webmasters who desire a calendar for users to post upcoming events on....and the inadequate functionality our visitors must deal with.
For a long time now, alot of us have voiced a need for a Calendar and UBBT board integration. We have five Admins on the Texas Offroad Network and we finally gave up on finding a scriptset we could do this with.
The list of features we want for our Offroad Community calendar follows....
We are a webhost for three of the four major dirtbike racing Series in Texas...we want each to have access to a calendar, but we don't want the user to have to search out info and listings on three different calendar applications....we want all the listings to appear on a single Calendar.
We host websites and forums for several dozen offroad related clubs in Texas....we want them to able to list upcoming events as well...and visitors can see ALL the listings for every club in the state...not just those on our network, but also smaller clubs and non-affiliate clubs.
We want all Series, Clubs, Tracks, and Promoters to be able to post original info, then follow up with any changes and updates...without having to delete the original post or add to a text doc that uses pop-up window (and gets too large to display properly).
We want the calendar to keep a consistent layout. We DO NOT want to see the "squares" on the calendar...that is, the daily boxes where event info is posted....to stretch to extremes whenever a post that is too lengthy is added....or when too many events are listed on a Saturday or other heavy event day.
To do that, we want to limit the "subject" line of the posts added to the calendar to just a few characters, so we can control the table layout on the calendar. We want to be able to allow unlimited daily posts and have the calendar expand UNIFORMLY in a way that the visitor is not forced to look at a warped and morphed table layout.
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We want the usual features like the ability to upload Event Flyers as scanned PDF files, or Word docs, or Text files...with directional map attachments or photos or other visual aids.
We want the public and the club members to be able to POST Q+A related to events listed on the Calendar.....and add links to other websites on the network where additional info is posted.
We want to integrate a thread on the forums with a specific event listing on the calendar...by using a simple link.
We do not want the threads to move around according to which posts are NEW when a revision to an event is posted. We want the original DATE to determine where the thread is on the boards.
We would prefer ALL the data from both Calendar and UBBT be in the same MySQL database.
We want all threads on the board...and the dates on the calendar itself....to be SEARCHABLE by DATE using the simple UBBT search functions. We do not want to have to integrate complex search scripts. We want all threads on the board....and the dates on the calendar...to be SEARCHABLE by CLUB or SERIES acronym or name.
We want visitors to be able to create a dynamic LIST of all the Events being planned by any SERIES...or by all the listings on any DATE....especially when NEW entries are added....and link to the posts and Q+A for each entry.
We DO NOT want the Admins to be responsible for keeping the Calendar UP TO DATE. This entire process should be created by the users, updated by the users, and maintained by the users. The Admin job is to watch over their work, not DO the work.
