Partially Implemented A better way to add events

[Snow]

I put up a couple events and got messages saying that they were moved. I was able to find out where the first one went to and then added others in the same area after that.

But adding them in a list doesn't show much info about them unless you click on them. It would be nice if you can add an event to a specific area, maybe an "event" area and possibly have a date somewhere in the title.

Even better would be a way to visualize when the events are like in a calendar instead of listing them where they can move up and down like other messages do.

 

The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of Okinawa.Org.

[Okinawa]

We've been toying with a few ideas on how to implement a better calendar and it looks like one will fit perfectly for our use on adding events in Okinawa.

As you suggested, it will look and feel like an actual calendar with possibly the event information. However, the underlying discussion for the events will still be held in automatically generated threads, much like the "Discussion" tab you see in the Okinawa blog articles.

There is no planned timeframe on when we will implement this, but we are hoping to have it up within the next month or two as other things are currently being developed as well.

For now, events can still be added to the Family and Housing forum, or wherever they fit. A staff member will move it to an appropriate forum or make a new one if the event doesn't quite fit there.

 

[Okinawa]

Our Okinawa events calendar has been running smoothly since being introduced on the website.

That said, we're going to mark this as "Partially Implemented" for the time being.

Two primary reasons for this:

1. First and foremost, many events in Okinawa span multiple days with each day offering something unique and sometimes even have differing starting and ending hours between days.
   
   With how the calendar works now, we can only add the starting/opening time for day X and the closing time for day Y, which for example could be opening at 0800 on January 01, ending at 1200 the same day, but continuing the following day, starting at 1000 and ending at 1300. Though, we would need to add the same event to the calendar from 0800 on January 01 and ending at 1300 on January 02.
   
   In the same event, we can only describe the times and events over the days. This doesn't make it as optimal as it can be confusing by combining a one, two, or even three-day-long event into the same "day".
   
   
2. We would like to have a list of upcoming or featured events on the left side of the website (desktop) or somewhere visible on a mobile device across all pages without accessing the calendar directly.

There's definitely work that needs to be done with the calendar to make it more helpful and concise with information. But how it stands, it works; though, we'll push forward until it's complete.

We will slowly be working on this section of our site to make it more ideal to use so many more can rely on it to find something to do in Okinawa.

Nevertheless, we've still awarded you with the "My Idea" medal for coming up with this approach over forum threads or separate Okinawa blog posts for each event.