Aw Naw! Nae another message board?

[Albacore Drone]

The inspiration for this is unashamedly 'Eirecore'- the Irish punk and hardcore forum. I'd been visiting it for a while and was really impressed by how organised and together the Irish punk scene seems to be.

Here in Scotland we seem to have different things happening in different areas without any national organisation or networking.
Admittedly, there is a lot seems to go on across myspace in the Scottish scene- but myspace is saturated with... well... myspace whores! It's really hard to figure out what's what, who's who and who's doing what where.

I just thought if we could all get something on a more national basis, as well as the regional stuff: such as The Edinburgh Punk Gig Guide, etc.; then it could only improve the scene.

I realise that there are only so many message boards a body can keep up wi', but hopefully this one might be worth popping into your favourites.
But it all depends on you. This place can only be useful if it is made use of- and that means using it.

Anyhoo- enough sermonising!

WELCOME TAE ALBACORE!

If you want to check out our spiritual inspiration, here it is...

Eirecore

If we ever get half as busy as Eirecore, we'll be doing ok.

[olssen]

think it's really good, well done. would like to use the calender to be able to see gigs happening at a glance or whatever, think that would be good idea for everyone. - but can't work it out!! help.

[Albacore Drone]

Right- not too sure about the calendar function myself, but I've checked the settings and the viewing function was set to 'everyone', so even 'guests' should be able to see it.

On the title bar at the right, you should see a tab saying 'view all events'. You should also be able to view monthly by changing the month listed on the top left.
None have been added yet, though- which might be the problem.

The 'add events' function was set to 'staff only', which meant I'd have to manually add all gigs myself- as I'm running this myself, it's simply not practical.
What I've done is set the 'add events' function so that all registered users can input events. I'll take it on trust that this won't be abused for now- mainly because we haven't got that many members and most members are involved in bands etc, so it shouldn't be a problem just now.

Perhaps making a user group for 'Bands/ Promoters' and allowing only this group to add events might be an option. I'm always open to advice and ideas, though.

Anyway- give it a try and see if you can operate it now, let me know if you still can't work it, meantime I'll add some of the listed gigs (so we can try it out), then leave everyone to add their own if they choose.

Hope this helps. If not I'll do some research!

[Albacore Drone]

Alright, I've added all the gigs announced to date, so from here on in, if you want a gig added to the calendar, I'll leave it up to yourselves to do it.

The biggest problem is that, for obvious reasons, only the person who added an entry can modify the details.

If details need modified or added to any of the gigs I've done myself, pm me with details and I'll adjust them.

You can add your gig by going to the correct month (top left drop-down menu on the title bar) and clicking on the relevant date.
Enter appropriate details (try to keep the title short in case of multiple entries on one date) and add. You can also hit 'add new entry' (top right of title bar) and manually input the date via the drop-down menus on the input form.
Any problems, give me a shout.

If you want to see a list of all entries for the year so far, click on 'view all entries (top right of title bar)

[alexdistroy]

One thing I would suggest that you could do and I find handy for the forum for Galway, Ireland where I am from is to in the gig announcements section is to have a sticky thread that has all upcoming dates for gigs and just edit it ever week or so and people can post in it for upcoming gigs most people forget about the calendar function on boards or dont even know its really there however this is just a suggestion that I find helps. As it gives an overview of the upcoming gigs if you want to check out what I mean check it on www.screamformegalway.proboards.com/

[wastedblair]

Worth having a look at how Undergroundscene.co.uk has their gig listings.

Not sure how you do it but when you post a gig in the forum it asks for a bunch of details then when you post it in the forum it automatically gets added to a gig guide/calendar. It means you can talk about gigs but also have it listed on he home page when it's coming up.

[Albacore Drone]

I've been having a look- not sure how to achieve it either! I'm new to this, so I'll keep looking around to see if that can be solved. I've had a go at adding scripts to tweak things a bit in places but I haven't managed to get any of them to work yet! For the moment, I'd use the 'Gig announcements' threads to stoke the aftermath of gigs. Treat it as the main way of announcing gigs with the calendar as a quick reference sort of thing. I'll keep looking to see if there is a way of achieving that on the calendar announcements.

At the moment, the most pressing thing would be making people aware that the forum is here and that they can use it. I think most who are involved so far are either in bands or are in some way 'active' in respective scenes, rather than punters- for want of a better word.

[highlandpunk]

what about everyone that uses the boards here to spam myspace,facebook etc to drum up the numbers. as you say nearly everyone on here is involved in one way or another and we need to have the punters on as well.

[Albacore Drone]

Good call Alexdistroy- so obvious! I've Stickied all threads with gigs still to happen. I know what you mean about people not noticing calendars- I didn't know that function existed and I've posted on a few proboards before- you don't notice it at the top there!
Best solution all round for now, I think, would be to leave gig announcements as individual threads so folks can dissect the aftermath if they want- sticky any that have yet to happen, then unsticky them when they've been played.
The calendar is bloody handy, but as you say: no-one notices!

You're probably right about spamming various 'social networks', highlandpunk- without the punters it all become pretty meaningless. With bands and stuff on, it would be pretty handy as a resource, but without gig-goers it's unlikely to amount to much!