Update – 7/28/2012: The EventPublish.com website appears to be gone. It comes as no surprise to me to find that this website is no longer available. While the product seemed extremely promising, their lack of effective communication was likely the nail in their coffin.
I came across Event Publish at HotScripts which is one of my favorite websites for trolling for new scripts. I have a Sphider search engine and I was looking for ways to add more content. I imagined the links in the footer might include news, articles, people, and events. I have a tendency to cram too much into a website because I find these scripts and I feel I must find ways to put them to use so I can play with them. I’ve since learned that less is more, but I still have my moments of weakness. Hopefully this website will curtail this activity and I can pursue different open source and commercial scripts simply for the sake of reporting what I’ve found.
Event Publish was the best looking, cleanest event management script I have found. The layout is exactly how I anticipated a professional looking event script to look like. It’s simple. You have a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly view option, and there’s also a link to select a number of locations. It’s just nicely laid out with ample white space, and I love white space. The admin area couldn’t possibly be easier to navigate too. Nothing convoluted at all.
It’s hard to rave about a script with so little, but an event script doesn’t have to be stuffed with useless extras, and this script is perfect in my eyes. Strong words from someone who’s never actually used the software with the exception of the demo. What’s good about the demo is you get it for thirty days.
I’d include a link to the demo, but since you have to provide your name and email address for some reason, I won’t bother. I don’t like when companies fish for contact info for trying their software, but I guess I understand too. If your demo has expired, it will tell you so, and ask you if you want to sign up for another thirty days. If you try to sign up with the same email, it will tell you there’s already an account with that email, so you get caught in this endless loop. If you want another thirty days of the demo, unfortunately you have to signup for a new one with a new email, or contact the company and let them know of their issue.
I had asked the company a few questions via the specified email from the contact page and received no response. I tried the another email days later and still no response. Determined to get my answers, I searched for some contact info over at DomainTools and tried one last email. Shortly thereafter I received answers to my questions and a sincere apology for the mix up.
The only small aspect of the script I did not care for was the monthly view when you put more than a few entries on the same day. The squares for each day will naturally stretch for each additional entry you add. However, this can warp the look of the calendar view and really detract from its sleekness. An easy fix is to just omit the monthly view with of little script tweaking, or should I say….a good old script hack.