Revamp Events: search sorting/filtering by date, API support, etc.

[Michael Thompson]

From everything I can find in Ning Creators, events are treated like a second-class citizen and don't seem to be given love at all. That said, the single most important aspect of our primary community is the events section but it's a nightmare for our community administrators to work with and we're losing users because it's near impossible to browse events in a coherent manor.

 

These are the changes we'd like to see for events:

 

• API Support. There's no reason not to allow read-only API access to events, if nothing else, but full REST stuff would be nice.
• Event Search. If we search for a common term in our events section, why are we shown an odd mix of events from the last several years? Why can't we filter these by a date range? Why aren't these organized by date, and why can't we sort by date?
• Recurring Events. It's been mentioned everywhere, it's still not an option, and it's an almost required feature for proper event management.
• Event Tagging. Why do we need to double-quote phrases for event tags AND use commas for tags? If you're using commas a delimiters there's no good reason that our users should have to double-quote phrases, however it seems that commas AND spaces are used as delimiters for event tags and that's causing problems in our community.
• Date Browsing. The current date browse/calendar UI is halfway down most event pages and non-obvious (the JS is also currently broken, so you can't click "Next Month"). Why isn't there an "Upcoming Events" or "Today's Events" link/area? Why can't users specify a range or a single date without having to click around in the calendar?

 

I'll add more as I think of them, but these are some of the more critical event changes we'd like to see. Does anyone have anything else, or any suggestions for how we might workaround some of these issues?

 

Frankly, it's the horrible event search that I think shows just how little effort has gone into the events section and it's been years of people asking for these sorts of events features with very little progress.

[Scott]

What about combining it - voltron style- with the new paid access feature?

 

Adding a new event costs a couple bucks, but viewing them is free.

 

Solves a moderation problem and a monetization problem at the same time.

 

 

[Michael Thompson]

Love this idea.

[Mom Group Owner]

+1

 

Though, I am not sure anything will happen, or someone from Ning will bother responding. There are several discussions on this topic and seems pretty basic functionality - but guess what, Ning does not think so!

[Michael Thompson]

I know, I've seen a lot of posts like these. I'm hoping that the issue keeps being raised and that eventually someone at Ning takes notice. Their events system really is pretty awful compared to the event systems for other community offerings and is so under-featured that it's hard to use effectively.

[Scott]

I kind of disagree.  I hope Ning sees all the posts like this one and decides the best thing to do isn't provide them, but instead complete the API and get third party developers to build apps for Ning again.  Mom and pop devs have to answer demands of consumers or go out of business.  This means we get what we want.

 

 

[Simone]

Hi,

I have the same situation... How do you get a work-around for this problems?

Events are very important in my community but they sucks! You can't set up customized fields or types, you can't do an advanced search, you can't have reccurring events, you can't organize them... and if you search a single word, appears the world! Even past events! This thing is desgusting!

 

[Simone]

An idea for "advanced" search: http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/events-advanced-search

[Venkat Krishnan]

agree- in addition to the above, I feel the need for the following on my network which is entirely 'events driven'-

• Event search by type, date, location, etc. and a combination of these (e.g., events in location X on y date)
• Event View by Sorting on date, location, type
• Most importantly, allowing custom fields to be added or defining validations on some of the fields (e.g., we'd like to restrict events to a date range, or types to a finite set of 5 from which users choose, locations to 50 from which they can pick, etc.

Anyone know how this is possible using any form of custom coding, using the APIs, etc.? Have been struggling so much with this, that am tempted to migrate out of Ning. Would happily pay a developer if it is possible to customise Ning to allow the above features...

[Neil Norton]

Events are important to me and they are very frustrating in their current state on Ning.  I would also like to groups be able to post events.