The single most important resource for the Realms is realmsnet.net (yes, even more than the View From Valehaven). It provides up to date event announcements, player and character lists, the ability to create event listings, automates voting for the View From Valehaven Awards, facilitates the Event Holder's Council proposals, has an online version of the rules/Omnibus, and has other useful tools. And while nothing on it is truly secret, for a new player (and some experienced ones) there is a lot of good material on realmsnet.net that not everyone might know about. This series of articles will endeavor to highlight some of these resources.
First up, lets look at the singular best feature of the site, the one you will be looking at the most.
In the bottom right of the site there is the list of Upcoming Events. This shows the next 5 events that are upcoming with title and date (you may have to scroll down to see them all). You can click on the name of the event and this link will take you directly to the event write-up which will give you all the information you need about the event.
After the list of 5, there is a link entitled Event Calendar. Clicking on this link will bring you to the current month with all the events for that month. There is a wealth of information on this calendar.
-Dates in Red are combat practices. Click on the name and it will give you more information about the practice site. These are times and places that a person can show up to practice their combat skills. Most practices last a few hours. You can check out the different ones to see which one is close to you.
-Dates in Green are events that have a site and are confirmed as a Realms legal event. There are some factors that have to be met before an event can be deemed legal and Green means that the event listing has met those criteria. The event will still need to fulfill other criteria on the day of the event (have the required number of players, etc) before it can be deemed a legal event.
-Dates in Blue are for events that have not met all the requirements to be a legal event or are defined as not a legal event by the person who placed the event up on the Calendar. Often some eventholders will "reserve" a date by placing it on the Calendar without confirming a site. Other times the Blue may indicate the date is being used for something other than an event, such as a site clean-up day, or the Event-Goers Meeting. Often dates in Blue will change to Green before the day of the event to signify they have "fixed" whatever was holding the event back from being legal (such as confirming an event site).
Note that some dates can have multiple different events on it. This is shown by a dividing line between the two (or three) events. However, they are all still listed in the same Date box.
The Event Calendar is rather robust. At the bottom of the Calendar a person can move forward or backward on the Calendar to other months. Or they can choose a specific month and year to move directly to that month.
All event write-ups remain up on realmsnet even after the event has ended...all the way back 1999. Here you can read the Event Description. Often this will give some indication of what the event was all about (assuming the eventholder (EH) for the event wrote a good one). There can also be an Event Wrap-Up as written by the EH. The third thing is that a person can review an event and these will also be shown here. This is a good way to research what other people thought of the event, especially if the event is part of a series. Or for you to leave what you thought of an event.
You'll be checking out this feature of realmsnet a lot as you plan out your event-going schedule.