Make event list ordered by event date

I second, third, and fourth this. I cannot tell you have much time I wasted when I first began coming to the meetups. Trying to find which one at which date was a huge pain. I would also suggest a views filter that at least for the main events pane, only shows events that are upcoming and not passed. When there is a lack of them (which hasn't happened for sometime) we are displaying stale events.

Thanks for brining this to the forefront John.

Yes, I definitely support this! I must have missed a Cyber Monday deal on event posting this week in LA. The Pasadena event listing got trampled like a Tickle Me Elmo shopper on Black Friday. (insert another holiday analogy)

This would help out a lot. I also agree with everything the steve-en-ator has to say. Thanks for bringing this up, John.

It doesn't make any sense for events to be posted by their post date when someone is trying to figure out when the next event will be. And the only time this would work out to go through by a user is for events to be added en masse in reverse order. I've also wasted a ton of time trying to figure out where the next event is and this would be wholly resolved (and thus an actually usable feature) by ordering by event date.

It's a strong movement forward for those organizations that have 'lots' of meetings, being scheduled by different leaders, at different venues, across a large city, or the country, or world.

I'd like to expand the discussion of the feature, thinking it's obvious it's not going to be defaulted to work by the new sorting order, as any existing site that upgrades, will not get their expected sort order. So, a checkbox seems to make sense, the default of unchecked means use the historical sort order. Checking the box means sort by event start time.

Seems simple enough. Of course, there are other methods for a binary flag to be toggled in a web gui. Two radio buttons, with one defaulted to the historical sort order. Or a selection list. But I want to go beyond the obvious.

This post of mine is to suggest the sort order is not a binary flag.

Are there other sort orders?

If so, then a selection list, or radio buttons are needed.

The question now becomes, to be comprehensive in up front design effort, to avoid oversights, and later having to change a binary flag to a different storage method when other sort orders are 'found'...

What other sort orders are possible?

What about subsorting? You say never?

What about sorting by venue, and subsorting by some date parameter?

I think that is needed. To have to see 20 events hosted at 5 different locations when you are only interested in the 1 venue, that only has 3 scheduled events, the location is only 3 miles from your home or office, or commute, while the others are 20 miles or more away?

Never happen you say? Erh, ah, well, it does. I live in Los Angeles, a city that measures 50 x 30 miles. And 20 miles on the freeway, during evening rush hour, is now a TWO HOUR drive. For a 2 hour meeting. Then a 30 minutes drive home. That 2 hour drive is not a 'friendly' drive, indusive to arriving at the venue, full of wonderful spirits and good cheer, but can be a draining experience, resulting arriving tired, and unable to focus on the discussion.

I know there are other large cities, with large organizations, that need this.

For example an international firm with events at satellite offices throughout the world. There are hundreds, thousands of such.

What about music venue web site? For cities across the country?

My vote is not just for a new sort order, but design the GUI to handle multiple sorts, and subsorting as well.

The next question out of my big mouth is what about sub-sub-sorting? Is that needed? Perhaps that sub-features is for future years to implement?

At a minimum, a binary flag is needed.

Let's do some design work for the coder, now. Can we use this thread to hash out the issues presented?

My design suggestion is to allow sorting by distance between two zip codes (their geo centers, not a good algorithm for some countries), the zip code entered as a preference by the user, and the zip code of the venue. This works for Los Angeles, as zip codes regions are small, but not Northern California, where a zip code might several thousand square miles.

Let me make it more complex. :-)

The user should be able to put in multiple zip codes, or addresses (converted to long/lat by openMaps?), one for home, one for office, and more for the spouse's office, the childrens' schools, the market, whatever.

Now, I realized I've fried my welcome here. ;*) Too complex. So, I'm open to backing off this overly designed issue, but any code that is produced should be expandable to handle the need for sorting by geo location, or sub-sorting, or sub sorting to I would think at least 3 or 4 levels. Let's not box in the code, and the GUI design to prevent future expansion we know will be needed, is my point.

My 2 cents.

Pete

Post date is irrelevant to an audience concerned with when and where their next Drupal meetup is.

The "upcoming" view now has a page display http://groups.drupal.org/upcoming which accepts arguments like 3002 for la.

You can hopefully panelify that view and achieve what you want, yeah?

Great idea, folks.

OK, so everyone seems to agree - who has access to the view to make the change? :)

I may be missing something but if the "upcoming events page" is a view, adding a date field to every event will allow for easy sorting.