Liberal Democrats: Flock Together

It’s now dramatically easier to show whether you are attending a Flock Together event or not, by clicking in the ‘Are you going?’ box at the top right of every meeting page.

By using the kind of Web 2.0 technology used on sites like Flickr, the page will automatically update without needing to reload.

Have a go by registering on the party conference page at http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/showMeetingPage.php?Meeting=2818.

You need to be logged to get the full benefit.

For those interested in such matters, it uses the prototype Ajax library to update the page without reloading.

All comments welcome.

Just spent the last few hours trying to improve the way Flock Together handles lifts.

First of all, there’s a new page which shows all the current lifts wanted and offered at http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/showLifts.php

Once you’re logged in, you can now also email someone to request a lift or offer a lift. We’ve done this in a way which respects people’s privacy and should avoid spam.

For an example of how this works, try http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/askForLift.php?tu=mpntod&m=2818 (you may need to log in to see how this page works).

Where next?

Should we include simple lift-links in the emails we send out? Should we make it easier to add or remove lifts on meeting pages?

I’m keen for this to work because if we can get some extra car-sharing going it helps cut CO₂ emissions.

And don’t forget that every page of Flock Together will also look up the best way for you to get to a meeting via public transport. Just go to any meeting page and click on ‘by public transport’ to see the best route.

Just to let you know that Flock Together is now on Twitter.

Find out more at http://twitter.com/flocktogether

Any comments or suggestions as to how I might upgrade or improve the service most welcome!

Don’t get all excited just yet…

However, it’s clear that it would make a lot of sense to find a way to link Flock Together and Facebook…

What information would you like to be able to see from Flock Together on Facebook?  What would you like to be able to do with Flock Together events or organisations on Facebook?

All comments very welcome!

FT now shows contact email addresses for meetings and by-elections to site users who aren’t logged in.

To make things harder for spammers, they’re shown as graphic files rather than text.

If you’re logged in, they’re regular clickable text links as before.

I’ve put a few improvements onto the Flock Together site:

• It’s now possible to log in to Flock Together using your Liberal Democrats Account - just go to this page to link the two accounts
• For users that don’t have account or don’t log in, Flock Together now does a much better job of remembering your location and your preferences
• I’ve added some information to the front page which lets you know what’s happened recently on Flock Together. There’s a fuller version on this page.
• You can now add a link and a description to your user page (under ‘Your Profile’ in the left hand menu).

That’s it for the moment. Any further comments and suggestions welcome.

Will Howells been working on an experimental 3 column layout for Flock Together…

To try it out, just log in at the site and then go to http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/blog/?style=5

To return to the current default, just go to http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/blog/?style=1
If you think you can do better than the proposed 3 column look, or have any other comments or suggested improvements, please let me know or write a comment in the blog.

If you want to develop your own stylesheet, it’s no problem to set individual users up with links to stylesheets hosted anywhere on the internet if you like playing with CSS and would like to develop your own look and feel for the site!

I’ve just updated Flock Together to reflect the party’s latest local party structure.

This has also enabled me to create feeds using the party’s official numbers for local parties.

If you would like to get an RSS feed for your local party using your local party’s ‘official’ number, it’s at:

http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/rss.php?partyID=yourpartysofficialnumber

For example, Winchester is at:

http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/rss.php?partyID=632

All the other flags for the RSS feed still work as previously posted.

Flock Together events pages now have a link showing you how to get to events anywhere in the country by public transport from your home postcode via the Transport Direct website.

Just look for the section called ‘Travel Details’.

You can have a go at working out your route to Harrogate via http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/showMeetingPage.php?Meeting=1108 or, indeed, almost any other meeting on the site.

I’ve added some more variables for Flock Together feeds…

The basic feed remains, as before:

http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/userrss.php?id=yourusername

Instead of your user name, it’s now possible to reference by membership number or postcode. For example:

?pc=RG14+1PJ&range=50

does the postcode and range (if you leave out range, it uses 50 miles). And:

&mn=1234567

does the Liberal Democrat membership number (although this only works for registered users of Flock Together who’ve entered their membership number when they registered).

For registered users who want to publish their feed, it may make sense only to show only meetings that they’ve ‘registered’ on Flock Together. To do this they can add the following onto their URL:

&registeredonly=yes

To sort the meetings in order of reverse appearance (i.e. the most ‘recent’ post will be the most immediate upcoming meeting), add:

&sortorder=meetingdate

If you want to show your feed on a Prater Raines site, then the best option is just to add the following to your URL:

&praterraines=yes

Finally, to set the publish date to the meeting date (which may break some feedreaders, since the publish date will be in the future), just add:

&scheduleddate=yes