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From Elxis Official Documentation

The Event Calendar (component) is an event management and publishing system by Apostolos Koutsoulelos. It lets you store events, which are displayed to the end-users through a table similar to a desktop calendar. It supports repeating events, as well as day, week and month display.

Some of its features include:

• Monthly, weekly and daily view of calendar
• Support for repeating events
• A print button for events info
• A more social (as fashion commands) interface, as registered users can reserve to an event
• A PayPal button to pay for your event reservation
• Automated template uploading (no need for an external ftp client anymore)
• RSS feeds with forthcoming events
• An extension for IOS Sitemap, so your event categories are easily reachable to Google's search engine

Month view

Event view

Category view

Instructions

Administration

Configuration

To see the configuration panel of Event Calendar (component) hit Components tab in top navigation bar and select "Event Calendar" then "Configuration".

General Tab

In General Tab you can change these options:

 Who can post events: Set which user can post new events through the front-end

 Who can edit events: Set which user can edit new events through the front-end

Date Format Tab

In Date Format Tab you can change these options:

 Date Format: The default date format [day-month-Year | month-day-Year | Year-month-day]

 Starting day of week: Select the starting day of the week for month and week view

Display Tab

In Display Tab you can change these options:

 Default View: The default view of the celendar [Month | Week | Day]  

 Display navigation: Select if the navigation menu is displayed

 Display print button: Select if the print button is displayed

 Display RSS button: Select if the RSS button is displayed

 Display week-numbers: Select if the week number will be displayed

 Display week-numbers as links: Select if the week number will be an active link to week view

 Display periodicity: Select if the periodicity of the event is displayed

 Display categories: Select if the event categories will be displayed at the end of the component

 Category columns number: Select the number of columns for category display

 Component Template: Select the component template

Here you can add new templates or remove the installed.

To remove an installed template select the template and click the "-" button. To add a new template select its local path and click the "+" button.

Timetable Tab

In Timetable Tab you can change add or delete timetables. Timetables are the time width of the calendar, e.g. the first and last hour that it will display.

To add a timetable set the starting time in Starting time of block and the ending time in Ending time of block in HH:MM format and click the "Add" button to see it on the left listbox.

To delete a timetable select it from the left listbox and click the "Delete" button.

To select a timetable by just clicking it on the left listbox.

RSS Tab

Since version 1.0, Event Calendar automatically creates a RSS feeds with the forthcoming event. Here you can change the way the syndication file is created.

In RSS Tab you can change these options:

 Cache: Select if the syndication file will be cached  

 Cache time: Select the time, that the syndication file will be cached (in ms)

 Number: Select the number of the displayed events

 Title: Select the syndication title

 Description: Select the syndiation description

 Multilingual feeds: Select if seperate syndication files will be created for each published language

 Image: Select the syndication image

 Image alternative text: Select the syndication image alternative text

 Text limit: Select if all or part of the event description will be displayed

 Text length: Select the length of the displayed event description (in characters)

 Live Bookmarks (for Firefox): Select if Live Bookmarks (for Firefox) will be created

PayPal Tab

Since version 1.0, Event Calendar supports registration for events and therefore a way to pay for registration using PayPal was introduced.

In PayPal Tab you can change these options:

 Your PayPal e-mail: Set your PayPal account e-mail

 Currency: Select the PayPal currency

Managing event categories

Organising your events into categories helps you manage your events in a user-frendly way. Create as many categories as you wish and then add event to them.

Add Event Category

To add event categories hit Components tab in top navigation bar and select "Event Calendar" then "Manage Event Categories".

There you will see our familiar button "new" to the upper right corner of the page, press "new" and a page will open.

Then you have to fill all fields:
1. Give a Title to the new category.
2. Give a Name to the new category.
3. Suggest a SEO title by pressing the "suggested seo title" link under title-input fields.

All above fields are mandatory to create a new event category. As in case of other categories either have options for language, user access level.. etc. Again elxis is able to create the category and use default options for those secondary non mandatory fields. If you want you can modify now or any time in the future by following the above steps.

The categories have their own colors which can be changed when editing events (see later on).

Finally save category by pressing "save" button at upper right corner in category manager page.

Delete Event Category

To delete event categories hit Components tab in top navigation bar and select "Event Calendar" then "Manage Event Categories".

Select form the list the categories you wish to delete and press "delete" button at upper right corner in category manager page.

Managing events

Add Event

To add an event hit Components tab in top navigation bar and select "Event Calendar" then "Manage Events".

There you will see our familiar button "new" to the upper right corner of the page, press "new" and a page will open.

Then you have to fill all fields:
1. Select the category of the event. From here you can set the color of the selected category.
2. Give a Title to the new event.
3. Suggest a SEO title by pressing the "suggested seo title" link under title-input fields.
4. Set when the event starts in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format. There is a small timetable to help you input the date.
4. Set when the event ends in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format. There is a small timetable to help you input the date.
5. Set whether the event is pubished (default is no).
6. Give a small description of the event.

If you want you can modify now or any time in the future by following the above steps.

At the right side of the page you can see three tabs:

• Repeating Options: Set the periodicity of the event [Every day | Once a week | Once a month | Once a year] and then select the exact date.
• Exceptions: Set dates that should be excepted from the above set periodicity.
• Contact information: Set the contact details for the event.

Finally save event by pressing "save" button at upper right corner in event manager page.

Delete Event

To delete an event hit Components tab in top navigation bar and select "Event Calendar" then "Manage Events".

Select form the list the event you wish to delete and press "delete" button at upper right corner in event manager page.

Approve Event

User commited events are not immediately published, rather they are subject to administrators' approval.

Unapproved events' state (Column "Published") displays an icon showing a calendar with a clock. To approve an event just click the state icon to turn into published.

Front-end

Private front-end

If you have the rights to add or edit an event, two more option will be available to you at the top of the component "add" and "edit". Click on any of those two options and you will be redirected to the edit page of Event Calendar. Then, just follow the instructions given above for the back-end to edit or add an event, as the interface is alike.

Please do have in mind that user commited events are subjects to administrators' approval.

Working with CSS templates

The Event Calnedar (component) is very flexible, as it lets you create and use your own template that suits better your site! In this part we will see the structure of the template and the specific CSS classes that Event Calendar (component) works with.

Template folder and files

Inside folder /components/com_eventcalendar/templates/ is where component templates are stored.

Event Calendar (component) templates use a specific file structure. As an example we will see how the default template files are deployed:

default.css - templates css file
f_default.css/ - templates images/file folder
f_default.css/default.gif
f_default.css/edit.png
f_default.css/english.gif
f_default.css/new.png
f_default.css/printButton.png
f_default.css/rss.png
f_default.css/view_day.png
f_default.css/view_day_f2.png
f_default.css/view_week.png
f_default.css/view_week_f2.png
f_default.css/view_month.png
f_default.css/view_month_f2.png

There is also .gif image files that are named after a specific language (greek.gif) and are used for PayPal registration support.

What the component does when looking for templates, is to search for css files inside component template folder and then get the images from the corresponding folder. That way, you avoid writing xml template files, saving time when building your site or while the component is loading (as no time nor resources for reading xml files are spend).

NOTE: The folder that stores template images is named after the templates css file name by adding the "f_" prefix,
otherwise the template will not work!

Images

The above-mentioned images are the minimum ones that an Event Calendar (component) template needs to fit properly. These images are:

new.png	edit.png	default.png	english.png	printButton.png	rss.png
view_day.png	view_day_f2.png	view_week.png	view_week_f2.png	view_month.png	view_month_f2.png

PLEASE NOTE: When creating a template for Event Calendar (component) you should name your custom images as above,
or the component will not function properly.

CSS classes

Here is the list of the main CSS classes Event Calendar (component) uses with a short description:

Packing the template

After finishing your template, pack all files into a zip file and upload it using the instructions set above

NOTE: Releases prior to 1.0 did not support automatical template upload. If you are using version 0.1 then
after finishing the template use any ftp client and upload template files (template.css and f_template.css
folder with its images) inside the components template folder (/components/com_eventcalendar/templates). 
Event Calendar (component) should automatically see your uploaded template and make it available through its 
Configuration pages.

Updating

From version 0.1 to version 1.0

Download the update patch from here to your PC, unzip it locally and follow the instruction inside README file.

Credits

@based on	Kay Messerschmidt <kay_messers [at] web [dot] de>
		http://forge.joomla.org/sf/projects/eventcal

Changelog

version 1.0 (2010/08/09):

 * added: a print button for events info
 * developed: a more social (as fashion commands) interface, as registered users can reserve to an event
 * added: a PayPal button to pay for your event reservation
 * developed: automated template uploading (no need for an external ftp client anymore)
 * added: RSS feeds with forthcoming events
 * developed: An extension for IOS Sitemap, so your event categories are easily reachable to Google's search engine
 * ... and of course a lot of debbuging and minor fixes

version 0.1 (2009/05/31):

 initial release

Related Links

Event Calendar module