Posting Forthcoming Events

We generally aim to have local events (Street-Os, Night-Os and Park Races) set up around 2-4 weeks before the event itself. Other, larger events should be set up as far in advance as possible. Certain events (City Race, Box Hill Fell Race etc) have slightly different procedures.

It is recommended that you use a computer for the following steps, as mobile websites or apps may require a different procedure or offer reduced functionality.

Three steps:

A. Blog Post

Write a blog post for the event (contact Ollie if you don’t have a login for the SLOW website) – login here – then it’s normally easiest to copy and change the text from an existing event blog post, choose one for the same time of event. Contact Ollie to get your login permissions updated, if you can’t see appropriate posts.)

In your post, include the following pieces of text in the appropriate places, setting the date as appropriate. Later on, these get auto-replaced with panels containing the information.



RegistrationBetween and
Start TimesBetween and

Other information can be copied from previous events. If using the HTML editor, use the H2 html tag to separate sections.

Publish the post and copy the URL somewhere – you need it for the next step.

B. Facebook

Public events are all our events except Club Night training events, the AGM, Annual Dinner, Christmas Dinner and other member-only social events. The procedure for public and member-only events is similar but they are set up in different places. Facebook recently changed their interface so that our old trick of creating events for public races in the members group and then making them public, no longer works. Note that Facebook regularly change their interface so that the below steps may change.

Procedure for public events is:

  1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/southlondonorienteersYou should check that the “Write something…” statement here has a SLOW logo beside it, rather than your own profile pic. This means that any actions you take within the group, by default, will be as an admin of the page, meaning they will appear more prominently. If this is not the case let Ollie know.
  2. Click the “More” drop down and choose “Events”
  3. Click “Create Event”
  4. In the popup:
    • add in a consistent event name, e.g. [Map Name] Night-O.
    • Location should be the pub/facility it is run from – preferably choose it from the type-ahead drop down because then you should get a ready-set map, address details, and the pub itself may get notification from Facebook about the event and pub locals may see details of the event if they go to the pub Facebook page etc.
    • Co-hosts can be left blank, or if you like can be your own profile if you wish, or the profile of the day organiser, but the latter only works with you are Facebook friends with them. If you do add yourself (or the organiser) as a co-host then that means your (or their) non-orienteering Facebook friends may also see the details of the event on their feeds.
    • Ticket URL – add a link to the page on the SLOW website, if it is up. If not, you can edit the edit later and add this retrospectively.
    • Description. Whatever you like, but I would recommend adding a link to the page on the SLOW website (even with the Ticket step also done) at least, e.g. “Full details at …. “.
    • Don’t check “Only hosts can post…”
    • If you like, put a better photo in. You’ll need to upload one from your computer, so download a good one first from elsewhere on the SLOW website. It’s important to have a photo as this makes the event more eye-catching in people’s busy feeds.
    • Date/Time – set this appropraitely and add an end time. I found this a bit buggy, ie. it wouldn’t show the time pop-up, so you may need to edit it later.
    • Click Create.
  5. Click “Invite” -> Choose Friends -> SLOW Members -> Select All -> Send Invitations. This will only invite friends in SLOW Members that you are personally Facebook friends with. So if it’s not very many, ask someone else who has lots to do this. Ollie has (at time of writing) 78 of 189, I suspect some people will have many more. In fact, you can ask several people to do this. People can’t be invited twice so don’t worry about dupes.
  6. Share the event into the SLOW Members group. Do this “Invite” -> Share Event -> In a group, type “SLOW Members”, then click “Share event”.
  7. If the event is already set up on the SLOW website, then rather doing all of Step 3 below, note the Facebook event number (it’s the long number in the web address when you are viewing the event. Then add it to the SLOW events database – do this by logging into SLOWeb, then Tools -> SLOW Events DB, in the “Facebook Event ID” box.

C. Set the event up in our events database.

You need both the event URL from Step 1, and the Facebook event ID which you can get from the URL in Step 2. Go to the events database page (login log into SLOWeb then Tools->SLOW Events DB). Search for the event – it will probably already have a basic entry, as it will have been set up in advance, but most of the details will be missing. Alternatively you will need to set it up from scratch.

For the location, you need the decimal latitude and longitude. You can find this by going to osm.org, navigating to the precise location (zoom right in) – try a search first? – and then looking at the numbers in the URL – e.g. This will give you a URL with the lat and long of the centre, e.g. for http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/51.25435/-0.32236 the latitude is 51.25435 and the longitude is -0.32236

Finally

Check that:

  • the information now displays correctly on the event webpage on SLOWeb
  • that it is listed on the front of the website as a forthcoming event
  • that a link to the details, and a Facebook link, appears on the Events page on SLOWeb.

iCalendar Feed

This is updated automatically. The iCalendar feed is used by some people to subscribe to our event postings.

SLOWeb Front Page

This is updated automatically as long as you have categorised the event correctly.

Attackpoint Listing

Angus generally does this but you can do this if you are a user of the site and he hasn’t already.

Update March 2021: for most events there is not enough reason to update Attackpoint.

British Orienteering Registration

The Fixtures Secretary does this.