How-To Create Your First Event Calendar

Welcome!

This How-To will help you to get started with the Event Calendar. We won't dive in details like editing templates or managing categories, but instead we'll set-up in a few minutes a calendar that uses default values. If you want to control your calendar more in depth, see the Admin's Manual. If you didn't yet, make sure to have a look at the User's Manual. It will give you an overview of the calendar's features.

Contents

1. Creating the Calendar
2. Setting-up the Calendar
3. Checking the Stylesheets
4. Checking the Template
5. Getting More Info

Creating The Calendar

1. Go to the structure screen of your admin area:
   
   "yourSite/admin/conversations/yourSite/structure"

2. Select or create the folder in which you want your calendar (it could be also at the root, of course).
   

3. Once the contents of the folder in which you want the calendar is displayed, scroll the window all the way down to get the Add New Folder Or File form.
   

4. Enter the name of your calendar in the text box (since it will be used in the url, you'd better avoid spaces and other non alphanumeric characters that would end up encoded in the url).
   

5. Select "Event Calendar" in the "File Type" popup menu.
   

6. Click on Add New File. The page will reload, confirming the creation of the calendar.

That's it. A new calendar has been created in your site.

Setting-up The Calendar

The calendar is usable with the default values, but there's a couple of important properties that you may want to check.

1. Locate your calendar in the Folder Contents form and click on its name.
   

2. This will bring the File Properties screen for the calendar.
   

3. The first section is the same as for any page type. Keeping the default values should work fine for the moment.
   

4. Scroll the window down to the second section, 2. Calendar Attributes.
   

5. If you want to allow others than yourself to edit/delete any event (even those they didn't create) enter a username or a group name in the Editors text field. You may also keep it blank. See the User's Manual for more infos about this.
   

6. If you want all members to be allowed to post new events and edit/delete their own events, check the second Contributors radio button (All Members). If you want to allow this to a limited set of members only, enter a username or a group name in the text box and check the first checkbox. You may also keep the text field blank (see the User's Manual for more infos about this.)
   

7. Set the Calendar Timezone to the timezone you want. Every date in your calendar will be in that timezone.
   

8. Set the Default View to what you want. That's the view that will be displayed by default to guests and to members who didn't set their own preferences.
   
   
9. Scroll the window all the way down and click on Change File Properties.
   

Checking The StyleSheet

As the rest of Conversant's interface, the Event Calendar makes extensive use of Cascading StyleSheets.

If you just created your site, the four default stylesheets you got already contain the calendar's classes and you may jump directly to the last section.

If your site has been created before we released the Event Calendar, the calendar's classes were added to your stylesheets (if necessary) when you created the calendar. In this case, if you use one of the four default stylesheets (Autumn, Pacific, Spring, Winter), you may have nothing to change. If you're using your own stylesheet, you may have to edit the default classes that were added to it, to get them matching the rest of your stylesheet. All the calendar's classes are prefixed with "#eventDlog", ".eventDlog", and ".eventCalendar".

You can access your stylesheets from:

"yourSite/admin/conversations/yourSite/stylesheets"

If you're not sure which template you're using, look at the Template attribute of your calendar page.

Note: if your stylesheet defines the link styles (A:active, A:link, A:visited) they can conflict with the category text color. So we recommend you to delete them (they're at the bottom of the stylesheet) and to define the links colors from the body tag (in your admin area, click on "Preferences", then on "mainResponder Interface", and locate the Body Tag attributes. Enter there the values for "alink", "link" and "vlink".).

Checking The Template

This is the last step, and it's pretty easy too.

First, if your site was created after we released the Event Calendar and if you use the "default" template, you're done setting-up your calendar, and you can start enjoying using it.

If you're using your own template, you'll just have a couple of items to add into it.

If you're not sure which template you're using, look at the "Template" popup menu of the parent folder of your calendar. That is if you're in the properties screen of your calendar, just click on the link that reads "Up To Parent Folder" or "Up To Root Folder", and so on, until you get something else than "[use parent folder template]".

Then click on the "Templates" link in the left column navigation bar, and click on the name of your template in the page you'll get.

Here are the two pieces of text you have to add:

• <!--#javascript name="editEvent"-->
  The Event Calendar uses Javascript in several areas. The required scripts have been added (if necessary) into your conversation when you created the calendar, but you have to put this macro call in the template used by your calendar page for the javascript to get in the page. Add this macro call near the top of your template, preferably in the <head> area of the html page.

• <!--#eventCalendarFiltersBox-->
  This macro call will be replaced with the calendar's Filters Box (see the User's Manual for more infos on this) each time the rendered page is one of the calendar pages (Month, Week or day view). When the rendered page it's not a calendar page, this macro call will be replaced with an empty string.

That's it! Congratulations, your calendar should now be up and running.

Getting More Info

If you need more infos on the Calendar's features or use, see the User's Manual.

If you need more infos on calendars setup and customization, see the Admin's Manual.

Please, feel free to let us know if you run into any trouble setting-up or using the calendar. Thanks!