Linking to the Dance Gypsy
The Dance Gypsy is intended as a resource for the dance community. We are happy to include links to any dance group, organization or service. You are also welcome to provide information to your members by allowing links directly to our listings from your own web site.
You may also add your favorite search (or searches) directly to your “bookmarks” or “favorites” menus: simply:
- perform your search,
- when you have the search you want, wait for the results to appear and
- bookmark the result.
Note that when you access the page again in the future, the new access will return any known events at that future time (but I recommend not using the dates option).
Linking directly to sub-sections of the Dance Gypsy
Many groups may not be interested in the entire Dance Gypsy web site and would like to be able to send their members directly to list of interest. For example, an English country dance group might want to link to the listings of all English dances, a Vermont-based group might want just the Vermont dance listings, and a group on the west coast might want to go directly to the west coast festival listings. These groups might prefer to skip the navigation from the Gypsy’s home page down to their subsection of interest.
You may always use the performer or event finders to generate your links, but for those of you who simply to create your own custom links, here you go (these are a little more flexible and a little shorter).
In general you can list by using a generic link :
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php
Followed by restrictions describing the events you would like (and yes you must restrict the query):
Event form (dances or festivals)
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals
(you must specify at least one of the above, plus any number of the items below)
Dance styles
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances&Contra
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals&Balkan
(specify as many as you like)
and/or a state name:
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances&Vermont
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals&NH
(specify as many as you like)
or multiple entries or combination:
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances&Contra&Square&English
Find any and all of those styles
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals&Iowa&OR
finds dances in any (all) of those states
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances&MA&Ballroom
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals&AK&HI&English&Scottish
finds dances of any of the styles which are also in the specified states (specify as many as you like)
Distance:
you can also specify a distance (miles) from your home base, by providing both items:
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?festivals&radius=10&near=05301
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/eventList.php?dances&near=100&near=Los+Angeles+CA
And many more combinations. I invite you to experiment, but many of the simpler queries are listed below:
Dance series by type:
Regular dances by state:
(Sorry but, at the present time, the Dance Gypsy lists regular (weekly/monthly) dances only in New England and the immediately adjoining areas)
Dance festivals by Region or State:
Dance festivals by type:
Dance performers:
It isn’t really feasible to list direct links to all 2500 bands, musicians, callers leaders and instructors listed in the Dance Gypsy, but we can show you the general form:
http://www.theDanceGypsy.com/performerList.php?musician=firstName+secondName
or
http://www.theDanceGypsy.com/performerList.php?leader=firstName+secondName
or
http://www.theDanceGypsy.com/performerList.php?performer=firstName+secondName
(which finds either musician or leader)
thus, to link to David Kaynor’s data you would enter
http://www.theDanceGypsy.com/performerList.php?performer=david+kaynor
to link to Wild Asparagus’s data you would enter
http://www.theDanceGypsy.com/performerList.php?band=wild+asparagus
If there are more names, just list them, separated by “+”.
As with the events you can further restrict by location, dance style, instrument, etc:
Some guidelines and suggestions:
Band and person names need not be capitalized. But the style keywords (like Balkan and Contra) should be written as here with a leading capital. State abbreviations are all capitals. If a name has diacritical marks (á, ö, Ø, etc.) you will usually do best to use the closest Latin equivalent.
Generalization
An easy way to construct your requests is to simply use the Dance Gypsy’s performer or event finder and copy the full URL that appears at the top of your browser window.
Note: the Dance Gypsy is no-longer frame-based.
What does this mean to you? Frames are the way the dance Gypsy used to maintain the controls always visible on the left of every page. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of frames is that when a user looks at a new subsection of the site, the location bar at the top of their browser window usually does not reflect the new page: it still seems to show the original or home page. Worse yet, if you try to copy the location in order to create a bookmark or link, you usually get the home page and not the subsection (which is fine with us, but it doesn't get you the advantage you hoped for). To make things worse, many frame-based sites would not work correctly if you did manage to link to a specific sub page. This is no longer a problem.
