Many forum systems (vBulletin, for example) come with built-in calendars. Aside from keeping track of member birthdays, does anyone here use the calendar feature? What for? Is it widely used by members of your community?

In times past, I've not used them. But I've got three new communities pending launch. One of them is a forum for fans off offbeat (Horror, cult, exploitation) films. On it, I intend to use the calendar to keep track of brithdays of genre figures, dates of upcoming conventions, and for dvd release dates.

Sounds cool. I just started using the calendar for various IT conventions, lan parties, computer shows, etc, but I'm not so sure how to go about promoting the new feature and encouraging its use.

Well, if you used the vBEvents hacks, you'd probably get the results you wanted.

Since our community is a sports community we do use it to keep track of upcomming fixtures and events in the sport, apart from that its just the same old birthdays.

I took a look at the vBEvents hack, but it doesn't seem to be directed towards what I want to use it for. It seems that it is more for scheduling gettogethers among DaniWeb members (ie roll list, etc). I want to use it more as a way of informing DaniWeb members and visitors alike of upcoming industry conventions and conferences. The only feature I think I'm missing is making it searchable But that is in the works ...