Kellie mentioned the listings feature that we have added to the guide. I wanted to give a bit more detail on that new option and the reasons for it.
This feature is designed to achieve several things
- Make it easier for us to automatically remove event dates when they have past. Or in the case where the date repeats each year, we'll be able to update that as well.
- Make it simple to extract events or sights and match them up to other content on the site. For example, if someone searches for accommodation in Amsterdam around the 30th of April, we'll be able to show them some information about Koninginnedag, which might help them understand why the prices are higher. It might also make them decide to go a week earlier to be able to catch all the fun!
- Make the editing quicker and more fun by including an editing form directly in the guide article.
- Reduce the need to know our code format when adding / editing listings. Though the listings can certainly be edited that way as well, this is setup to be handled much more easily.
- Provide people with a clear indication of what things should / could be entered for a listing.
- Format listings in a consistent way, so that it's easier to follow along
- Give us the possibility of creating a better Event Calendar than our previous attempt (which some of you will remember was on our front page, but didn't work all that well)
Anyway, if you want to give it a go, there's several ways to try it out.
1. When looking at an article, you will see an "Add Listing" link at the top of some of the relevant headings (Sights, Events, Eat, etc)
2. Some articles already have listings all formatted, for example Melbourne. You can see there the end result of formatting them all. You will also see an edit link next to each listing, so you can quickly tweak just one of them.
3. If you go to edit the entire article, you can highlight an existing, non-formatted, listing and click on the button that is next to the photo icon in the toolbar (it's mean to look like a contact card). It will try to extract content into the right fields. You can then insert that back into the article with new listing tag around it.
There's still improvements to be made here and I'm definitely open to suggestions if you have any! Let me know what you think 