Ask Slashdot: Events Calendar Software For Local Community?

First time accepted submitter hughbar writes "I live in a London suburb that has many activities and classes, yoga, IT [of course], running, art, assorted volunteering and many others. With the help of the local council, we'd now like to make a centralised, searchable database of these, with a number of helpful features: Easy to make submissions, otherwise the whole thing will always be out of date; Web accessible [obviously] but mobile phone friendly as well; Maybe, publish and subscribe, so people can 'subscribe' to yoga listings for example; Handles repeating events, like a classical web calendar; Maybe, can be consolidated with nearby events calendars. I'm aware of MRBS and WebCalendar, but I'm wondering whether there are other suggestions, especially as this is a useful social application. And, yes, I'd like it done with open source, then we can tailor it."

Comments

civiCRM

[oregonjohn]

https://civicrm.org/ is extraordinarily powerful for community work. It can deal with any number of different organizing needs from paying for classes to calendaring, from constituent matters to membership sites. Check it out. I'm currently working to make civiCRM work as a law practice management solution. It needs some significant tweaking to make it work for that purpose, but for you needs it will probably work "out of the box" so to speak. Like any major software package it requires setting up, but there a lots of people around the world who have experience setting it up, you can even just pay to get the settings you want.

Re:civiCRM

[SpzToid]

CiviCRM is extremely good at what it does, and works with Drupal, as well as Joomla.

I like Drupal a lot. Drupal is like LEGO bricks you can build anything out of, and if you install CiviCRM on top of Drupal, that's like building the Millennium Falcon Star Wars Edition LEGO along with a spaceport for it. If that interests you, then also add OpenAtrium to your short list of things to check out too. In fact you can combine them if you want and they'll give you complimentary functions, however you might also find OpenAtrium is good enough for your CRM needs. Or you might swap out CiviCRM from your OpenAtrium platform as described, and use RedHen CRM instead.

Whatever direction you choose for CRM, I hope you'll give OpenAtrium consideration towards your requirements, (that is what the White House uses for its workgroup collaboration too). It's a good Space Dock Platform to hold your calendaring, notifications, public/private docs, etc.

http://openatrium.com/
http://redhencrm.com/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog...

Pro-Tip: In a lot of places where I have introduced OpenAtrium, when I get around to installing the sheetnode module, and everyone gets collaborative spreadsheets, I often hit a home run. The spreadsheet usefulness and ajax is extremely good.

https://drupal.org/project/she...

Re:Google

[FuzzNugget]

Pick two

calagator

[everydayotherday]

What you're talking about is similar to Calagator in Portland, OR. The site is http://calagator.org/ and has a link to the source code.

Re:Owncloud

[DarwinSurvivor]

As much as I love owncloud I've found the calendar to be buggy when it comes to repeating events. Sometimes my weekly events will suddenly be a day later on 1 week. I haven't checked if it's only in the interface or if it affects the iCal interface, but it's something to watch out for (and test). Note: I have not had any issues with one-off events.

it's been twenty years, or forty

[holophrastic]

Explain to me how it's 2014, and this is the same question that I've been asked since I started my web business in 1992? I'm just plain bored with it. We've had twenty years of web calendars, and forty years of software calendars. I've had enough of the question. What a waste of an entire industry. What good is an industry that can't solve a single basic problem in two decades? I'll be 60 in 25 years. I'll have retired twice, and I'll be consulting for random other companies. I swear my very last project, on my death-bed, will be the very same "we need an event calendar, what should we do?".

Show of hands. How many readers here have built, installed, chosen, spec'd, designed, setup, trained, populated, migrated, or exported an event calendar more than six times? I'm approaching about 150 at this point.

Re:it's been twenty years, or forty

[icebike]

So you are 35, and you have already done this 150 times and you haven't got ONE suggested solution for a community calendar?

Re:it's been twenty years, or forty

[hughbar]

Although, this is [without a doubt] young male troll-talk, I'm going to answer:

• - It's a lot simpler to find software that's as 'near' fit as possible, cuts down on custom code
• - You may have to maintain custom code, to keep up with changes in the core project, additional resource
• - This is a volunteer gig, so I'm anxious not to write thousands of lines of code for it
• - It's fun for everyone to exchange information about this, it's a very common problem
• - If it's a small set of mods, I'm going to try and get some of the local kids to do them
• - [in reply to the specific trolly-talk] Nope, I'm not asking for community custom mods

Good luck to you sir, but please grow up a little!

Re:it's been twenty years, or forty

[DerekLyons]

I sound like a cook in a restaurant who, among many other things, has been making peanut butter and jam sandwiches for twenty years, and someone starting a new restaurant is asking for a recipe for peanut butter and jam sandwiches.

Your self delusion and arrogance runs even deeper than you made it sound at first, not a trivial accomplishment.