I’ve made tons of improvements to the FanCalendar web platform.
Daily Events View
When you first land on the home page of the website, you’re greeted with a list of the top events for that day. When you close the sidebar, you see the full calendar experience, with a slideshow of ever-changing images. Alternatively, you can click on “More” to see all of the events happening on that day. Join our mailing list to have the week’s top Featured events sent to you each week, along with interactive content, quotes of the week, and top images from pop culture around the globe.
Full Calendar View
When you close the daily events sidebar, you’ll see the full calendar grid. Click on any date that month to reopen the sidebar and see the top events for any selected day. “Featured Events” are always viewable to the right, and upcoming events – organized by category – is just below the calendar grid. Above the grid there is a slideshow of images that can easily be changed in the Admin Control panel. There are also buttons to jump to any month of the current year and buttons to jump to other years.
A great feature of the platform is the ability for registered users to create their own calendars and add their own events to those calendars. I am considering opening up the platform for other users to take advantage of this feature. Feel free to give me feedback if that is something you are interested in doing. I just need to ensure everyone’s autonomy and privacy on the platform, with just a bit more work needed.
Event Page View
I have dramatically improved the single event page view, exposing more of the data that is available when creating event pages. Event pages have non-distracting animation as a default. There are also more than 20 page design options available, which can be easily selected when creating event pages. All event details are now visible on the page, along with the page thumbnail image. You can also add a gallery of additional images or embed a video within the description. Finally, every event page includes an auto-generated QR code for easy sharing on mobile devices.
One thing you won’t see are banner ads. I decided early on with the project not to go that route for funding. I find ads to be distracting from the content and can slow down page loads.
Share Options View
Every page on the website includes sharing tools for easily posting your event page link on other platforms. There are also two URL fields so you can add links to additional platforms.
Other features added during recent updates include:
- Every user has their own Private Address Book, in addition to the Public Address Book for facility addresses.
- Historical events recycle on their date every year, giving archive content a new audience every day.
- News event pages are now more content-driven and the page layout shifts to become more of an article.
- The code continues to be optimized for faster page loads and easier discovery of the content you’re looking for.
- More than 40 other feature improvements and optimizations throughout the platform.
