When we launched a new site look and feel in October, the mini-calendar took a mini-vacation. But when your feedback started pouring in, we realized it was time to call mini-cal and plead for its safe retun home.

We’re happy to announce that, as of January 26, the mini-calendar is back! Showing up as soon as you log into BigTent, and on every group buzz page after that, the mini-calendar bolds the dates when your groups have activities planned.

There’s also a text preview of two of the day’s events, and a link to view your full monthly calendar:

Mini-cal has had a few makeovers in its day. Here’s a gallery of how the feature has changed over time:

Mini-cal, today

Mini-cal, c. 2007

Mini-cal, c. 2006

Oh those features, they grow up so fast! Got questions or comments? Just let us know.

Last week we unveiled some great new features on BigTent! The features include:

- Easy download of calendar events

- Greater visibility of forum search options

- Customizable invitation rejection message

Easy download of calendar events:

For our tech savvy members, we’ve created a feature that allows you to integrate your BigTent events into your desktop calendar applications. This feature allows you to download your calendar events to your desktop for use in other Calendar applications such as Outlook, Google, and iCal.

You can download events 6 months prior to and one year from today.

Greater visibility of forum search options:

Instead of having to click on “Advanced Options” to filter forum topics by author, date, or message type, these choices are now a part of the main search menu. You can filter messages by forum, keywords, author, date range, message type, or any combination of these.

Customizable invitation rejection message:

We know you never want to deny potential members entry to your group, but sometimes an interested person may not fit your membership criteria. For this reason, we’ve created a feature that allows group leaders to add a message that gets sent when you or another leader rejects a potential membe’s application.

This feature is particularly useful for groups with a limited capacity, or groups that only accept members who meet a certain requirement (e.g,, attended a specific university or have children of a certain age) and want to specify these requirements when denying memberships.

We’re adding new feature and enhancing existing features all the time. Stay tuned for more tune-ups in the Tent!