We’re always trying to think of ways to improve Berkeleyside. Today, we unveil the Events Calendar, which we think will be a useful resource for both readers who want to know about concerts, talks, theater and other events in Berkeley, and for those running events to get the word out.
Find the button for the Events Calendar at the top of our home page. Once you’ve clicked through, you’ll see a link to submit your own events at the top of the calendar. We screen all events submissions, but we encourage people to use this self-service calendar for the community.
If you’re looking for something to do, you can search the Events Calendar in a number of ways: by individual date, by date range, by keyword, by zip code or by category (music, say, or children).
If you go to an individual event, you’ll see there a host of ways to get the word out about the event — Twitter, Facebook and email, among others — and a handy button to add an event to your own calendar.
We’re also planning some other improvements to Berkeleyside, which we’ll unveil in the next few weeks. Nothing radical: evolution more than revolution. But some readers have already noticed we’ve changed the navigation at the top of the home page, eliminating the categories for a simpler set of links.
When we launched our redesign last November, we believed categories would be a great way to navigate the site. The truth is, hardly anyone uses them. Out of the 2.5 million pageviews on Berkeleyside in the last year, the top category, news, had 27,800 views. Other areas where we’re proud of coverage had far less (crime — 8,540, food — 6,964). If you love navigating by categories, you can still do it: go to the bottom of the home page and you’ll find a dropdown menus for categories on the left-hand side.
We’re working on new topic pages for some of the key areas that we’ll signpost prominently, and that will gather our coverage in a more accessible way. Again, look for those later this month.
As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback on Berkeleyside — praise and brickbats.
Update, 5:25pm: Some of the wrinkles still need to be ironed out on our new Events Calendar. Please bear with us while we work to get it functioning perfectly. We’ll get there. (At least one of our tech consultants is away at Burning Man this week!)
