(Thu 3rd Nov) Calendars & Permissions

[Keith Lawrence]

Hi Folks

I've just added the custom calendars, I've also been having a twiddle with some of the user group permissions so shout (if you can:)) if you notice anything strange happening.

Calendars

We now have three calendars, they are visible to everybody, if you look at the bottom of the Forums page you'll see events from these three calendars combining into a "What's On" for the next 30 days. We may have to play with the displays later, make it a bit more obvious, put them on the home page... but that's tuning, let's get the basics working first.

I have limited who can post events to the three different calendars, try it -

BSAC Members : Any BSAC member can post to this, trip spaces, SDC's, club socials - that type of thing.

BSAC Coaching and ITS : Only members of our Coaching and ITS schemes can post to that, that's for the regional SDC etc.

BSAC Main Events : Only HQ etc. can post to that, it's for DOC etc.

Permissions and Facilities

I've had a play with some of the group permissions, inside the system everybody is known as a 'Registered User', only BSAC members (as identified by the automatic system) also belong to a 'BSAC Members' group. We've now started differentiating between the two as per Adrian's mod to the viewing of reputation posters. As with the calendars above, the members only forums that most of you can use - members now have extra permissions. I've throttled ordinary users back to the 50 PM's limit, but BSAC Members get 250. I'm also very tempted to cut the avatar size down again and ban the uploading of those bloody animations - but that will not apply to BSAC members of course :)

Several changes there - comments welcome as always!

Keith L

[garethwoodruff]

Keith,

A couple of suggestions (again :rolleyes: )

Tried adding a trip on the calendar and that worked, tried adding one on the ITS claendar and it would not let me in, so thats good.

Is there a way to make the drop down for the ITS calendar bigger or more obvious, its difficult to spot, it took me 2 minutes when I was looking for it.

Could it be a bigger direct link at the top of the page so its bigger? or something like that? What do you think?

With avatars, what about making them non animated and small, and you have to ask a moderator for something bigger, i recon you would only get half a dozen requests a year?

Just some randon thought:)

Gareth.

[Keith Lawrence]

Keith,
A couple of suggestions (again :rolleyes: )


Keep them coming!

Calendar Displays - it's all possible Gareth, what are you like at HTML/php(ish) coding? :) What you see on the screen is rendered by internal code/html snippets called templates, we can change them to whatever we like, go to another vBulletin board (like YD) who use the defaults and you'll see our layout is slightly different - that's how it's done. What we need is somebody to do that type of stuff, the existing Admins are up-to-eyeballs in it :eek:

Avatars : We discussed and sorted that last week, 7KB max and allow animations. But I played the nasty, draconian admin again last night and cut it back further to 4KB with no animation! That doesn't apply to BSAC members of course, they still get the 7KB + animations limits :D Everyone else is our guest, our forums, our rules.

HTH

Keith L

[Tristan Green]

Keith,

Is there a way to make the drop down for the ITS calendar bigger or more obvious, its difficult to spot, it took me 2 minutes when I was looking for it.

Could it be a bigger direct link at the top of the page so its bigger? or something like that? What do you think?

Gareth.

Keith,

This goes along with TerryH's suggestions - why not make the calendar button at the top of the page a drop-down menu? Then you can go straight to whichever calendar you want to look for.

... and before you ask - I haven't a scooby about php code (just take a look our Club's website to see the woeful lack of html talent I have between my ears :D )

Cheers,
Tristan

[Nigel Hewitt]

what are you like at HTML/php(ish) coding? :)Did the course. Got the Cert. Then learnt it by doing it. <sigh> (Apache/mySQL/PHP)
But I played the nasty, draconian admin again last night and cut it back further to 4KB with no animation! That doesn't apply to BSAC members of course, they still get the 7KB + animations limits :D Everyone else is our guest, our forums, our rules.I love it when you're bitchy.

Admit it. You only took the Welcome thing away because you couldn't reconcile the posts with the threads. How 4 new posts could be 7 new threads still eludes me.

Will you be hosting the advertising? And are you paid more for a click through?

[Keith Lawrence]

How 4 new posts could be 7 new threads still eludes me.


It obviously eluded the coders who wrote that bit as well :) Where they on the same course as you but didn't do the practice? I knocked the 'Welcome' bit out because basically it duplicated much of the info in the header.

K

[Keith Lawrence]

I love it when you're bitchy.
Ahhh... I forgot to mention... the ability to post Polls seems to have vanished for guests for some strange reason, BSAC members seem to be able to though :rolleyes:

K

[Dave Sydenham]

Keith,

Just tried out posting a couple of SDC's on the Coaching Calendar. All seems to work fine. Maybe we'll even get a couple of extra candidates out of it... ;)

Cheers!

Dave
:)

[Keith Lawrence]

Just tried out posting a couple of SDC's on the Coaching Calendar. All seems to work fine. Maybe we'll even get a couple of extra candidates out of it... ;)

Hi Dave

I've just cleared all of my testing junk out of the calendars so I think we'll declare those 'Open For Business'. If you go to the main Forums page on http://new.bsacforum.co.uk/forums/ and scroll to the bottom you'll see your event combined with any other events in a global BSAC "What's On" event list.

We've got some work to do in this area, Tristan has come up with some damn good ideas for navigation, ideally we need to tidy our side up a bit, make it more prominant, maybe place it on the home page. But the principle is there, as long as the calendars are doing what you need them to do we'll find a way of dragging the info out of the system somehow.

So there you go folks, feel free to add your branch and coaching events to the calendars, we'll call those live (...ish, barring disasters), the rest is tuning as we go along. Thanks for the report Dave, it gives the admins confidence that we're heading in the right direction. All of you, for everything - feel free to comment! What you've got here is the "starter set" for discussion and tuning, so if you think we can improve it then we'll talk it over, reach a concensus, then put it on the 'To Do' list if needed.

And once again - a huge THANK YOU to all of our testers and to our Sys Admins. You have all been a massive help, many of your comments and improvements have been noted and done already, please keep them coming. This has been a real team effort and long may it continue - because that's what the BSAC should be all about in my view.

Keith L
BSAC Council Member
BSAC IT Team Leader
Long suffering forum admin and resident BSAC Anorak In Chief

[garethwoodruff]

Kieth,

Calendar Displays - it's all possible Gareth, what are you like at HTML/php(ish) coding? What you see on the screen is rendered by internal code/html snippets called templates, we can change them to whatever we like, go to another vBulletin board (like YD) who use the defaults and you'll see our layout is slightly different - that's how it's done. What we need is somebody to do that type of stuff, the existing Admins are up-to-eyeballs in it


Sorry my IT skills are fairly limited I'm afraid and I think HTML is something to do with the Internet, sorry:( !

Gareth.

[Keith Lawrence]

Sorry my IT skills are fairly limited I'm afraid and I think HTML is something to do with the Internet, sorry:( !


Hi Gareth. Adrian has picked up on your comments, if you select 'BSAC Master Style AJK' from the bottom left of your screen the navigation bar will change, have a look at the 'Calendars' link on there.

K

[garethwoodruff]

Keith / Aidrian,

Thanks, thats what I had in mind.

Cheers,

Gareth.