Musician Concert Schedule Widget

[folivio]

I bought the new Web Designer Premium 365 upgrade.

I am wondering if any of the new features will do this... I need a concert schedule widget that can be inserted into the Xara website design and allow the musician to manage it themselves by logging in and adding their concerts (I'm hoping we can use Xara Online Designer for this). Right now I'm using bandpage.com and artistdata.com to achieve this. The problem is that bandpage.com does not keep past shows, but the look is very attractive. The artistdata.com keeps the past shows, but isn't very attractive.

Here are pages from a couple of my sites (Done in another app, but being recreated in Xara).

Bandpage.com: http://chareewhite.com/
Artistdata.com: http://tommybrandt.org/tour.html

Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

[Acorn]

I bought the new Web Designer Premium 365 upgrade.

I am wondering if any of the new features will do this... I need a concert schedule widget that can be inserted into the Xara website design and allow the musician to manage it themselves by logging in and adding their concerts (I'm hoping we can use Xara Online Designer for this). Right now I'm using bandpage.com and artistdata.com to achieve this. The problem is that bandpage.com does not keep past shows, but the look is very attractive. The artistdata.com keeps the past shows, but isn't very attractive.
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

folivio, I would suggest using the Table widget.

You can do two things to make it blend in.

The first is use Themed Colours and set up Theme Color 1 to match your website main colour.

The second is to add a small bit of CSS to the Page HTML code (head):

<style>


#table TR {
background: transparent;
}
</style>

You need to give the Table widget a Name of "table".

The last part is to put a box or shape or picture behind the table that will now show through the transparency.

For the data in the table, this is CSV format - column data separated by commas.
You can add links by making an entry an HTML format: <a href="http://www.duckduckgo.com">This is the data shown</a>

I don't know if the Online Designer is widget smart yet.

==========

There is a far easier approach where you have a one page site for the artist to access with the Online Designer where you have formatted, tabular data with fully graphics any hypertext links.
Yu control the main site and use the Embed a Website widget.


Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Like Acorn suggests, I might use the Table widget or use a Google Drive sheet.

There are advantages/disadvantages to both.

The largest problem with both methods is letting others amend the files. Unless they really know what they're doing it can quickly become a nightmare.

Xara's Table widget draw backs are:

1: You can't dictate the column width, It's automatic, and is wastefull of space.
2: It only uses csv files. Commas are used very commonly in everyday use. It would be easier if you could dictate the seperation character, such as a colon or hash (#).
3: The biggest draw back is the ability to sort columns into alphabectical order. Fine if you require this feature, but a disaster if not. Sorting a table contents on columns makes the table meaningless. The only alternative is to place an image above this top row such that the sorting buttons can't be accessed.

Google Drive sheets draw backs are:

1: It can be tricky getting the table to show within the iframe. Change the table width and horizontal scroll bars appear.
2: It shows 'unwanted' headers & footers on the sheet. These need to be hidden by image overlays.
3: Biggest issue is showing other users how to work in a spreadsheet & how to amend it, without completely messing it up I prefer one editor only, me.

[Acorn]

1: You can't dictate the column width, It's automatic, and is wastefull of space.
2: It only uses csv files. Commas are used very commonly in everyday use. It would be easier if you could dictate the seperation character, such as a colon or hash (#).

Egg, you can overcome the comma issue with an escape code: &#44;.
You can force a column width with a SPAN tag: <span>Joanne&#44;Smarty&#160;Pants</span>,4,9,4,7.

I do agree that jumping through such hoops is not for the faint-hearted.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

I do agree that jumping through such hoops is not for the faint-hearted.

That's an understatement for a WYSIWYG web editor

Thanks for the heads up re the escape codes an column spacing, never knew either of these but that's far from intuitive and I note you don't mention the sort feature that can render a table useless.

I notice that probably the two most requested help requests on TG is for Forms & Tables. Forms are a very knotty subject to deal with for a none coder user. However, Tables on the other hand should be far easier for Xara to impliment. One fairly resticted widget isn't really up to standard. But I'm sure you agree.

[penmore]

Can I respectfully suggest that I may be able to help the OP with his problem - I'm happy to 'develop' a demo for the OP that uses a simple CMS editor to maintain a database of tour dates and gives the enduser the ability to do online editing of these dates. The simple CMS software uses PHP MySql and costs as little as $29 for a user licence.

The code produced by this software can be injected into Xara and I can also provide the necessary html iframe and table code to complete the webpage development.

Please let me know if this is acceptable and I will put together the demo.

Pete

[Acorn]

Here is a demo of the embedded sub-site approach: Artist Venues.web - load and select File > Preview website (F5) to view.

In practice you would separate the Venue page into a separate design file and publish it to a shared location for yourself and the artist.
Using the Online Designer, the artist simply updates the content, adding links to their website or social media.

You control all of your full site (index.htm) and can set up separate sub-sites until the cows come home.

You have total control over fonts, size, layout & design for the sub-sites.

The only code you have to maintain is the link to the sub-site:

<iframe src="venues.htm" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" name="xara_iframe" >
<p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p>
</iframe>

venues.htm would be replaced with a full URL to the published sub-site.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

And here's a demo using Google Drive