Currently I'm researching the best ways to do so, and I need some help and input :)
I need an event calendar with registration. I need members to log on to the website, and to be able to register to different events.
I could always create custom db tables, and create a new section i Umbraco, where the webmaster could maintain the events and event registrations in the database. But this is not very "umbraco-like", and I would really like to make use af the relation-api from Umbraco.
This brings me to the Umbraco approach, where events would be created as nodes. My two great concerns regarding this approach, are:
1) The events consists of a Type (dropdown list of choices), Date/time and a Description. I can see a problem maintaining the events, as the webmaster would manually have to name the nodes (i.e. "Training session, monday 29th of August" to be able to tell them apart in the backoffice. This is not very user friendly, as the webmaster already told us this information in the Type and Date/time properties.
2) How would the webmaster get a quick overview of the registered members for an event (or administrate the registrations), without me creating a custom section in the backoffice to do so? Is there any obvious way of doing this, that I'm missing?
What I'm trying to say is "How did/would you guys address creating an Event calendar"? :-)
You could consider writing the nodename programatically from an eventhandler. So everytime and event is saved, you change the nodes name to a summary of the event data. Then the editor would not need to name them (and would not be able to), and thus would get a nice overview.
Another approach could be to hook into the tree rendering itself, and check if the current node is of the "event" type, and the write out a different name. Or if you have an "EventFolder" type, you could even sort the events beneath it in the tree.
There are also package that have funtionality like Datefolders/Autofolders which will organize your content into a folder structure.
Which approach you choose will probably depend on whether these nodes are only data nodes, or if the url for them is important/should not change. In that case you probably don't want to change the node name all the time, since the url will then also change and break external links/bookmarks.
My Event-nodes are only data nodes - i.e. they will not need to be rendered as pages.
If I subscribe to the event, and handle the naming of the nodes dynamically by using an event handler, how would the editor then be able to create new event? The editor would still need to (dummy) name the event, to get to the entering af the real values or?
How about the administering of the registrations - would I still need a custom section for that, or do you have any suggestions?
Yes, the editor would need to give the node an initial "dummy" name, which you will overwrite on save/publish.
We did one solution where we saved registrations as nodes under the event node itself. Depending on your requirements, it might make sense to just save them to a database, and let the editor handle them using a dashboard control, or maybe just link to an external .aspx page from the event node itself, using a custom datatype.
Depend on whether you need the registration info in you frontend presentation (ie, as cached content), or if you just want the editors to be able to view it.
Event calendar
I need to build an Event calendar in Umbraco.
Currently I'm researching the best ways to do so, and I need some help and input :)
I need an event calendar with registration. I need members to log on to the website, and to be able to register to different events.
I could always create custom db tables, and create a new section i Umbraco, where the webmaster could maintain the events and event registrations in the database. But this is not very "umbraco-like", and I would really like to make use af the relation-api from Umbraco.
This brings me to the Umbraco approach, where events would be created as nodes. My two great concerns regarding this approach, are:
1) The events consists of a Type (dropdown list of choices), Date/time and a Description. I can see a problem maintaining the events, as the webmaster would manually have to name the nodes (i.e. "Training session, monday 29th of August" to be able to tell them apart in the backoffice. This is not very user friendly, as the webmaster already told us this information in the Type and Date/time properties.
2) How would the webmaster get a quick overview of the registered members for an event (or administrate the registrations), without me creating a custom section in the backoffice to do so? Is there any obvious way of doing this, that I'm missing?
What I'm trying to say is "How did/would you guys address creating an Event calendar"? :-)
You could consider writing the nodename programatically from an eventhandler. So everytime and event is saved, you change the nodes name to a summary of the event data. Then the editor would not need to name them (and would not be able to), and thus would get a nice overview.
Another approach could be to hook into the tree rendering itself, and check if the current node is of the "event" type, and the write out a different name. Or if you have an "EventFolder" type, you could even sort the events beneath it in the tree.
There are also package that have funtionality like Datefolders/Autofolders which will organize your content into a folder structure.
Which approach you choose will probably depend on whether these nodes are only data nodes, or if the url for them is important/should not change. In that case you probably don't want to change the node name all the time, since the url will then also change and break external links/bookmarks.
Hi Morten,
Thanks for your answer.
My Event-nodes are only data nodes - i.e. they will not need to be rendered as pages.
If I subscribe to the event, and handle the naming of the nodes dynamically by using an event handler, how would the editor then be able to create new event? The editor would still need to (dummy) name the event, to get to the entering af the real values or?
How about the administering of the registrations - would I still need a custom section for that, or do you have any suggestions?
Yes, the editor would need to give the node an initial "dummy" name, which you will overwrite on save/publish.
We did one solution where we saved registrations as nodes under the event node itself. Depending on your requirements, it might make sense to just save them to a database, and let the editor handle them using a dashboard control, or maybe just link to an external .aspx page from the event node itself, using a custom datatype.
Depend on whether you need the registration info in you frontend presentation (ie, as cached content), or if you just want the editors to be able to view it.
Thanks for your help - I'll give it a shot :-)
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