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Hi, i got this from David this morning, and I find it quite interesting and hope it takes off...

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Hello - I wanted to take a minute and introduce you to a site that I recently put up to try and provide easier access to information about what is happening when and where in Belize.

I have been living in Belize full time going on 6 years now and traveling here since the mid 1990s. Personally I love this place but there are certain things Belize lacks. Many of those things I don't really care to see changed - along the 'paving over paradise' theme - but changing some would benefit everyone.

Since moving to Belize I have often found myself wishing I knew about upcoming events further in advance but there is no timely nationwide calendar that I have found which is easily accessible. There are a number of fragmented or localized calendars but they are often published late, hard to find, missing crucial information, etc.

To that end I put together a free online calendar for community and business use. It is intended primarily for businesses, organizations and communities that are sponsoring, promoting or advertising an event which is open to the public (tours, public meetings, sporting events, cultural events, fairs, etc.). Submissions to and use of the calendar is totally free and can it be found at www.BelizeCalendar.info

Once established hopefully it will be a resource for residents & tourists alike looking for information on events to attend.

If you have a few minutes I would value your feedback and comments. I am looking to make this available nationwide although since I just launched it last week most of the current listings are for Stann Creek District.

It has the added benefit for those posting events of helping with their search engine optimization (SEO) if they fill out their contact information completely since each time they post an event it will add a link back to their website automatically thus increasing their Google rankings over time.

Feel free to enter an event or two to get a feel for how it works and thanks for any insight and feedback. If you believe this to be a useful service I would truly appreciate any help you could provide with 'getting the word out' about www.BelizeCalendar.info and/or sending me contact information for any individuals or businesses you think would benefit from using the service.

Thank you for your time,
David Santilli
Principal

Punta Negra
Toledo District

What a GREAT idea. I too have found about event s I would have gone to a day or weeks later. I'll put the word out as much as I can...

Marty - Thank you for posting this and for the link on your sidebar/menu. Truly appreciated.

Tyshepp - Thanks for spreading the word as well. Please feel free to send the link www.BelizeCalendar.info to anyone in Belize that would benefit from a broader reach and a format conducive to time/date based events.

Please let them know it is free to submit events and all they need to do is click the "Submit" button and fill in the information.

A bit more then a week since inception and www.BelizeCalendar.info is growing steadily. Having said that there is still a lot of work to do to widen the net. If you know an organization, business or community that could benefit from additional exposure / marketing for their public events in Belize please let them know about www.BelizeCalendar.info

It is totally free to submit events and aids in SEO for those that do so with automatic links back to their site.

In the first week since www.BelizeCalendar.info has been online we have seen:

73 submitted events
45 active/future events with 28 completed
330 Unique visits to the site with a total of 496 visits in the first week.

We are currently running advertising on Facebook and continue to reach out to organizations to encourage their use of www.BelizeCalendar.info

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide with getting the word out to entities that may benefit from this online resource.

I tried puttin in an event but the system keeps telling me to put in a location name, yet it won't accept anything. What am I doing wrong?

Tyshepp - The first field under "Location Information" titled "Location Search" is designed to search the database for already existing locations and populate their data automatically if found. As you likely have not entered an event previously it is likely the the "Name Search" field will not return a value for you.

Simply ignore that field for now and enter information into the Name, Address, City, State, etc. fields as appropriate and you should not have a problem.

If you do send me a PM and I will try and figure out what is going on in your particular case.

If have already entered a location previous type 4-5 characters and give it a second. Unfortunately most Belizean ISPs lag to the point there is a delay in the database search. You will see this play out in the "city" field as well.