Urls in Community News Items Now Automatically Converted to Links

When you add a Community News item to DanceWeb, the editor now automatically attempts to detect links to web pages, and email addresses, and converts them into active links. When a user views your Community News Item page, they only have to click on the link to visit the referenced website or web page, or send an email.

How to Write Links

For links to be recognised, they must start with a space then "http", "https" or "www", or have the structure of an email (e.g. with an @ sign within them). The links may be embedded within sentences, and optionally followed by appropriate punctuation.

Examples of such links are:

www.mywebsite.co.uk
www.mywebsite.co.uk/classes
www.mywebsite.co.uk/?q=this&a=that
http://mywebsite.co.uk
https://mywebsite.co.uk
info@mywebsite.co.uk

How Links Are Displayed

For brevity, links to page are displayed without the http:// or https:// prefixes, and without any optional querystring. However, when the user hovers over the link, the full link (url) is displayed in the tooltip.

Submitting a Community News Item

Any registered user may submit news items. See:

http://www.danceweb.co.uk/help/submitnews.aspx

John Walton
DanceWeb Webmaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk

Community Bookmarking of DanceWeb Pages now Very Easy

A new feature has been added to DanceWeb, allowing you to very easily bookmark almost any DanceWeb page on the most popular Community Bookmarking sites. Such sites allow you to maintain a portable bookmark file of your favourites websites and pages, and share those favourites with other web users.

The feature is a new bar in the footer of most DanceWeb pages. Just click any of the links to bookmark the current DanceWeb page. If you are not known to that particular bookmarking site, you be asked to register (first time only). With most bookmarking sites you can add a comment to any bookmark.

The currently provided sites are the most popular on the web, namely:

Delicious, Digg, reddit, Facebook and StumbleUpon

A link to the browser's local "Favorites" file is also provided (works with Internet Explorer and Firefox).

John Walton
DanceWeb Webmaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk

Calendars Now Show Dated Community News Items

The home page and full page calendars have now been enhanced to show entries made in the Community News section, when those entries have a date associated with them. This means that such news items now function more like conventions "Events".

Calendar Page:

http://www.danceweb.co.uk/calendar

John Walton
DanceWeb Webmaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk

DanceWeb Google Maps Substantially Enhanced

The existing Google Maps, displayed at the bottom of the page for all individual Venue and Class / Events, have now been significantly improved:

1. "Get Directions" Added

There is now a direct link to Google's own map site, that allows you very easily to get directions to the venue, and plot a route, for a journey by car, walking or even public transport (if the data is available to Google).

2. Google Map Search Box Added

There is now a search box near the bottom of the maps. You can therefore search for businesses and map features that are approximately within the bounds of the displayed map. So you could key in "Inn" or "Restaurant" etc.

3. The Map Style Conforms to Google's Own Style

The "user interface" style now automatically tracks the style used by Google on their own map site. You can also use the standard interface: e.g. you can zoom just by rolling the mouse wheel.

John Walton
DanceWeb Webmaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk

A-Z Catalogue of All Dance Organisations on DanceWeb

This new feature allows you easily browse an A-Z catalogue of all the Dance Class and Event Organisers that have entries on DanceWeb, plus the Organisations that provide Dance Services or Products.

The Existing Directory Browse feature is similar but only lists names. The new Catalogue Browse additionally displays a summary of all the key information for each Organisation; this includes towns where they operate, dance styles they are involved with, and the services they provide.

The feature is here:

http://www.danceweb.co.uk/atoz

John H. Walton
DanceWeb Webmaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk/

Full-Page Calendar of Events Now Available

For some time DanceWeb has had a calendar feature on the Home page; the small calendar shows 6 weeks, with days having events highlighted with a contrasted background colour. When the mouse is moved over such a day, a drop-down appears with a summary of the Events for that day.

The additional new Full-Page Calendar shows similar information, but displayed on a dedicated whole page. The summary details of the Events are permanently displayed. Clicking on an Event title then takes you a page displaying all the details.

The new calendar is in the menu system under "browse", and also links from the title bar of the home-page calendar.

It can be viewed directly here:

http://www.danceweb.co.uk/calendar/

John Walton
WebMaster
http://www.danceweb.co.uk/

DanceWeb is now on Twitter!

Twitter is a "micro-blogging" service that lets you keep in touch through the exchange of quick, short messages - they are each limited to 140 characters! So if you would like to keep updated about all the new information being added to DanceWeb, but don't want to subscribe to any of the existing somewhat lengthy feeds and blogs, then following DanceWeb on Twitter is just what you need.

Every night, all the updates to dance classes, courses, events and services, along with updates to the community news, are condensed into individual "tweets" (Twitter messages), and posted to Twitter.

So by following DanceWeb on Twitter, you can easily keep updated without the information overload. The DanceWeb Twitter home page is:

http://twitter.com/DanceWeb.

Every entry contains a url (web address), that you can click to link directly to the full details on the DanceWeb site.

RSS Feed

If even the above is too much information, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the same information.

John H. Walton
Webmaster
DanceWeb

DanceWeb now works with Google Earth

We are pleased to announce a new feature on DanceWeb: the start of support for Google Earth (Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings etc; it is a fun application!).

Features

Wherever you see the GE (Google Earth) icon on DanceWeb you can click to see the current information on GE.

Initially, two facilities are provided:

1. Venue links: the GE icon appears on all search / browse result pages, for all Venues which have been accurately geocoded (i.e. the editor has identified their location to within 100 metres). When you click the GE icon, GE will be loaded, and the Venue displayed as a pin on GE. Clicking the pin will then show a balloon with further summary information.

2. Full results links: the GE icon appears on some search / browse results pages, near the top center, with the words "Display this Results Page on Google Earth". When you click the GE icon, GE will be loaded, and all the Venues will be displayed as pins on GE. Clicking any pin in GE will then show a balloon containing a summary of the Dance Classes held at the Venue. Clicking the various links in the balloon will show more details of the organiser, the venue and the class.

Google Earth Installation

The above features require that you install version 5 of Google Earth (or later), which was released in early February 2009. You can download from here: Download Free Google Earth

Google Earth should run on most PCs and Macs manufactured in the last 5 years or so, providing it has a 3D-capable graphics card (nearly all do). System Requirement Details

Demonstration

After you have Google Earth installed, you can see how the new DanceWeb feature works with this link: London Ballet Classes

John Walton
Webmaster
DanceWeb

New Feature: Add your own Dance News Items

DanceWeb now allows all registered users to very easily add their own News Items! The steps to add a basic news item are only slightly more complicated than posting an email; you just need a to provide a title, and paste in your news copy text. And for more advanced users, you can add dozens of other useful fields, including pre-defined and user-defined tags, as well as links to images, multi-media links and website links.

Once an item is posted, it will appear on several pages on the DanceWeb site, in an RSS feed, and also be posted in a nightly summary to the DanceWeb News Blog on Blogger. So your news item will be heavily publicised!

To start posting your own news items, read the Help page here:
News Submission Help Page

The summary of news headlines is displayed near the top right of the DanceWeb home page: DanceWeb Home Page

The current RSS Feed of News Items is here: RSS Feed

The Blog of News Items is here: Blog

John Walton
Webmaster
DanceWeb