PlaceCal v0.28 update: we now have a directory!
PlaceCal is our free, open source community events platform. Our latest update adds a searchable directory of partners and events, with neighbourhood filtering and a page for every group. Here's what we shipped and where we're heading next.
PlaceCal now has a central directory. You can browse partners, events, and partnerships in one place, filter by neighbourhood and category, and every group has its own page. It's the biggest front-end change we've made in years, and it sets up what we're building next.
Why this matters
As we've written about before, PlaceCal aggregates community events from dozens of sources into one browsable directory. We originally built it for funded public sector neighbourhood projects with staff who could spend time onboarding community groups into partnerships as part of their jobs.
The people most excited to use PlaceCal now are different. They're grassroots, often unfunded groups: climate justice networks, trans community organisers, experimental music performers, Black British history projects, and local queer groups. They don't have a paid curator to do the setup for them. This release is about starting to meet them where they are right now: short on time and money but big on enthusiasm.
What's new
A central directory. Until now, PlaceCal's individual community sites were the main way in. Now there's a central directory where you can search and browse across all of them. Partners, events, and partnerships each have their own pages, making the whole structure of PlaceCal visible for the first time.
Every group gets its own page. Each partner now has a primary shareable link that connects to all the sites they're featured on. You can send someone your PlaceCal page and they'll find your events, your contact details, and your partnerships in one place.
Neighbourhood filtering. A drill-down picker lets you filter by area across any site. Category and partnership filters update live, so you can see exactly what's happening where.
Findable on search engines. Groups listed on PlaceCal are now much more discoverable via Google and the like. We've significantly improved our metadata and accessibility and added sitemaps and other neat features to make sure listings come up wherever you're searching.
More reliable imports. Stuck calendar imports now recover automatically, and we handle Eventbrite edge cases (deleted organisers, timeouts) much more gracefully. There's more to do here, and we're heading towards spinning out our import system into a standalone library.
What's next
This release makes PlaceCal's three types of user much clearer: you're looking for something to do, you want to list your group, or you want to organise some groups to work together. That structure is what enables the next steps.
We're working towards letting partners sign themselves up directly. Instead of a curator doing all the onboarding, they'll be able to send out registration links or QR codes and let people in their network sign up themselves. Email your contacts, see who's interested, and go from there. We think this will make it a lot easier for people to “suck it and see” before committing the energy of onboarding more digitally excluded groups.
If you're anything from a VCSE to a grassroots group of groups that's been interested in PlaceCal but are worried about the effort involved to set it up: this is what we're building towards. We hope a much lower barrier to getting your community's groups listed will make it easier for everyone to get connected.
Get involved
We're still running monthly drop-ins where we onboard and support anyone interested in giving PlaceCal a go for their community at no cost. They're also great places to let us know any bugs or issues you've been having. Our next one is this Wednesday, 17 June. All our events are on our website and our PlaceCal page.
We think of PlaceCal as a mycelial network. Some groups connect directly, some go through a curator, some just need a place to link up their events. As the platform grows, we want to make all these connections visible and easier to build on. If that's something you're interested in, come along, or let us know how you'd like to use it in your community.
We're also always looking for:
- Code volunteers to help with development and testing
- Copywriting and marketing help to improve our copy and get the word out
- Donations to keep PlaceCal free for unfunded groups and support our development
As always, the best place to chat is our Discord or drop Kim an email.
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