When to Use Channels
In order to give context to a group of events, it makes sense to give those events a dedicated page for users to land on. This might lead you toward Localist’s Landing Pages (Places, Groups and Departments). These do a great job when it comes to showcasing event hosts and their events, while contributing to your platform’s overall taxonomy. This means that while these should always be your default option, there are a few occasions where it may make sense to build a Channel for instead of/in addition to your Landing Pages - after all Channels don’t contribute to your platform’s taxonomy.
When You Should Use Channels:
- To display a custom layout - If you want a page that showcases your events while providing more than just the default Landing Page options, you can add these extra elements if you create a Channel. These extra elements can include Featured Carousels, HTML elements, flipped displays, mini calendars, website links, and more. Ex. A branch library location homepage with its own Featured Events Carousel and CTAs back to their main website.
- Umbrella pages with several event lists - For example, a College within a University might want to collect the events for all its Departments on one page. So long as these Departments are set up as their own individual landing pages, a Channel can curate event lists for each Department. Ex. An athletics page with lists of events for each sport.
- Short-term event series - Do you have an annual festival that only has events for one week a year? If so, you can always create a Channel based on a Tag or Keyword. The Channel allows you to add the context your users crave using an HTML component and you can then easily turn this Channel’s visibility to hidden once the series ends. Ex. Fall Festival, Alumni Weekend, Family Weekend, Black History Month.
- Topical Themes - Does a certain topic matter to your community? Or does it apply to a subset of users, so it should not be a Filter? No problem! You can set up a Channel to pull in those events through a Tag or Keyword and showcase them all in one place with any other relevant info! Ex. Events friendly for children with special needs, volunteer opportunities, Alumni Channel.
When You Should Not Use a Channel
- When you need to build a Widget - Since Channels do not contribute to your calendar’s taxonomy, you cannot build Widgets around a Channel. Both Channels and Widgets are Promotion tools used to pull and display events. If you already built a Channel around a specific set of Classifications or date ranges, you can absolutely use that same criteria to curate a Widget!
- To trigger fallback images - At this time, the Photo Fallback Chain only applies to Landing Pages and Event Types. As a result, you must create a Landing Page in order to add a fallback image to the chain.