Release 23 — Markdown and Calendar Sync

Release 23

Release 23 brings richer text formatting, easier calendar syncing, cleaner link previews, and better search visibility for your club.

Markdown is here

Your biography, club descriptions, and event descriptions now support Markdown. That means you can use bold, italics, bullet lists, and links to format your text exactly the way you want it. Want to list your club's meeting schedule or highlight the important part of your event description? Now you can.

If you have not used Markdown before, it is simple. Wrap text in **double asterisks** for bold, *single asterisks* for italics, and start a line with - for a bullet list. Links look like [link text](https://example.com).

Existing plain text biographies, club descriptions, and events are unaffected. There is nothing you need to change - your text still displays exactly as it did before.

Add to Google Calendar or Outlook

Events got a calendar upgrade too. The "Add to Calendar" button on event pages now offers direct links to add the event straight into Google Calendar or Outlook, in addition to the existing download option. One click and the event details, including time, location, and description, land right in your calendar of choice.

Club resources look cleaner

Club resources that point to an external URL now display using their label instead of printing out the raw link. This is the same treatment already used for other external links across the site, so your club's resource list reads more like a curated set of links and less like a wall of URLs.

Your clubs are now easier to find

We added automatic generation of sitemap.xml, produced live by the server. This lets search engine crawlers discover public club descriptions and index them properly. In practice, this means your club is more likely to show up when someone searches for a club like yours in their area, increasing your visibility beyond people who already know about lookingforgroup.social .

What next?

Try out Markdown on your biography or your club's description, and see how much easier it is to keep people in the loop about your next event with a direct link into their calendar app.

lookingforgroup.social was created to get people connected in the real world. We need community leaders (a.k.a. club managers) to form clubs and we need users to enable that 'Searchable' toggle. Let everyone know you're ready to be social!

Head over to lookingforgroup.social and check it out.