We've recently rolled out a new version of the Events Calendar. In this version we focused on simplifying the process of adding events to the calendar.
We realize that mostly everyone these days is already using some type of calendar application. The last thing you want to do when planning an event is to visit a dozen websites, reposting the event information. To overcome this hurdle we've implemented minimal support for something called iCal.
If you're unfamiliar with iCal, it is short for iCalendar and can be simply thought of as RSS feeds for calendars.
With the new feature you can schedule an event on the SEOmoz Events Calendar simply by creating it in whatever calendar program you are already using (such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange). Our iCal robot will periodically connect to your public calendar and scan for any new events you've scheduled. When it finds them it will create the events on our calendar. This saves you the trouble of scheduling the event in whatever app you're already using and then having to visit the SEOmoz calendar to repost the information.
I've created a brief screencast that walks you through the process:
This text will be replaced
We've also added support for something called Textile. Textile is a markup language that allows you to easily add special style tags to your posts without having to use html. Explaining all the features of Textile is beyond the scope of this update, so browsing through this quick reference should bring you up to speed about what is possible using Textile.
I hope everyone enjoys these new features and finds them useful. If anyone runs into any problems or has any suggestions on where they'd like to see this go, then please forward them to [email protected]
:)
-Mel
Nice feature added there :)
And good that we can edit it and add any new entry if any exists! Have to check what textile refers to actually..
Events Calendarhttps://www.seomoz.org/events/75
Curious... Why 02:37PM ?
Would be great if you could add SEOMoz speaking and theater engagements to the calendar.
Hi SEOmoz, Any updates or any new articles on SEO friendly event calendars?
Very Interested!!
Ummm. I think I'm being slow, but I get: "I've created a brief screencast that walks you through the process:
This text will be replaced" so can't see the screencast and I can't work out how to subscribe in GCal. Can you post a link to the ical feed? It can't autodetect it...
Will, sounds like your browser doesn't like our movie viewer :(
Would you mind emailing [email protected] with your browser specs so we can trouble shoot this? In the mean time try viewing in another browser.
To answer your question:
You create an iCalendar feed by making a public calendar. You then paste the URL for the iCal feed into your user profile on seomoz.org Once that feed is associated with your user account you can either wait for our calendar robot to fetch it and update seomoz.org/events OR you can press the 'Update' button next to the feed input to make our robot fetch and process your feed immediately.
Let me know if I'm being slow and left anything important out :)
Looks interesting. I should try this in action...
Great! Someone start adding the SMX West After-Parties!
On a side note, the web cast is a little quiet, mel.
Its not quiet, I'm just a soft spoken kind of guy :)
You'll have to excuse the sound quality as it seemed to have been the most difficult part of putting the whole thing together.
I'm listening to it right now with headphones and do see what you mean, but have managed to get clear audio with the headphones volumne turned all the way up.
Sorry for the inconvienence, the next one will be better now that I've gone through the process and have seen what works and what doesn't.
You should extend this to use hCalendar
Nice work. I like the integration with an existing technology. In the age of on-demand, web accessible data the level of redundancy that still persists is amazing.