“Where’s the easy button?”

I can’t tell you how many times I heard that comment, or one just like it, from the the confused folks occasionally mired in our newspaper’s old online calendar.

One elephant in the room on valleyrecord.com was our Web calendar. It seemed to work fine when it rolled out three-odd years ago. But occasionally, the ghost in the machine got angry. Entries would inexplicably refuse to show up where they were supposed to. One man’s musical acts wouldn’t appear, despite pleas to the tech gurus. Simultaneously, a Little League event appeared four times.

Until last week, for the last three years, the only calendar item that ever showed up in my inbox for approval was a bowling challenge in Lynnwood…. which happened on May 16, 2009. Years went by, and still this one item kept bouncing around the system like an electronic Flying Dutchman. The automated system sent me an e-mail last Tuesday, asking to approve or reject the eternal bowl-athon for publication. We’re talking major gremlins here.

Today, I can proudly announce that the old calendar is no more. Long live the new one.

This new calendar—which appears on the main page of www.valleyrecord.com, and also under a link at the top of the page marked “calendar,”  looks to be much more user friendly. Instead of having to remember a username and password every time you enter something, all you need to do is enter the particulars of the event—time, date, place and so on—on a single form, not four.

Once you submit your event, I check it for no-nos, then post it. There should be much less head-scratching and hair-pulling on all sides.

It’s now quick and easy to post your events. Try it for yourself. If you get stuck, call me at (425) 888-2311 or e-mail. I’ll be happy to hold your hand, as I had to do too often under the old system. But I’ll bet I won’t have to. That’s good news for everybody.