Help with publishing online.....

[sfgfoundation]

Hello. I am a complete newbie. I am trying this software to see if I can publish a community calendar for our foundation. It needs to be able to have pictures(hopefully video) and anyone needs to be able to see it. This looks like the best software for that. I don't understand how to publish this online. I have been using google calendars, so everything is already online. How does this work? The documentation states that I can publish to a web address as long it supports webdav. I have no idea what this means. I need to sing up for some type of online hosting for this calendar? Any ideas on where I do that. I tried signing up for http://www.icalx.com (apparently a site that can host this type of calendar). I got a free account set up and I put the link they told me to use (http://icalx.com/public/sfgfoundation/) in the 'publish location to' space in the publish options of the 'share calendar' menu. I hit publish and it apparently published because In the ical exchange page I can see a new 'calendar' apparently added, but when I try to see it, it gives me this error:

There was an error!


Invalid calendar file. Please try a different calendar.

The calendar "/usr/local/www/icalx/s/sfgfoundation/public/School.ics" was being processed when this error occurred.

Please use the "Back" button to return.


I am not sure if I am doing things right here. All I want is to be able to publish a calendar that anyone can see online and that can have images and/or video displayed that people can see(google calendar doesn't allow images on it's calendar) Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Specially instructions as I am new on how to publish a calendar online. I don't know what FTP is (from the forums) Thaks Guys! Alan

[VueSoft]

Hi Alan, welcome to the forums. I'm not sure what is causing the error you're seeing when attempting to view the calendar on icalx. Another host you could try would be http://www.ical-mac.com. Also, the FAQ provides instructions that may help get you started.

Regarding the ability to show images or videos within the calendar (or popup reminder window), this won't be possible when viewing the calendar online. These capabilities are only present in VueMinder Calendar Pro when viewing the event description or receiving popup reminders. Also, to clarify, videos can't appear within the event description, those only appear in the popup reminder window. VueMinder publishes calendars using the iCalendar file standard, which unfortunately doesn't support these types of extensions. The data is included in the published file, but other web calendars don't know how to process the data since it's not part of the standard.

However, if you host your pictures or videos online, and other people use VueMinder Calendar to subscribe to your published calenndar file, then they'll also be able to see whichever pictures or videos you specify. The event editor assumes local files will be used for showing pictures and videos, but you can specify the web URL to your files and it will work (I think - I've only tested this for pictures, not videos).

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[sfgfoundation]

Ok. Sorry, I am still confused. So if I host my pictures online, then other people who see my calendar will be able to see pictures? I am not trying to create some type of thing where my calendar appears on other calendars, but more like google calendar, where people can go on our website, hit a link and see all the community events that are happening at the foundation, hopefully with pictures and/or video. If someone, from a public library(who has nothing special installed on the computer they are using) goes to my 'calendar' are they going to be able to see the posters and/or videos(i am not as worried about video,but I really need pictures) giving the details of the event? thanks for the help! Alan

[sfgfoundation]

ok. The i-cal-mac link you sent did work. I now see a calendar. However,the calendar is empty! I have set up several test posts, and none of them are up. I also have the us holidays being displayed(and I can see them on my calendar, but they are not showing up on the online calendar. Take a look:
http://public.ical-mac.com/sfgfoundation/
What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[VueSoft]

I just tested this again to make sure it still works and events correctly appeared in my calendar on ical-mac. I think there might be a problem with your settings. Could you double-check the Publish settings of your calendar in VueMinder? Try putting a filename at the end of the destination location (example: "http://public.ical-mac.com/sfgfoundation/calendars/calendar.ics"). Also, ensure your username/password are specified and the calendar is set to automatically publish. Please let me know if it still doesn't work after making those changes.

Note, ical-mac doesn't show the published event descriptions, so you won't be able to see pictures within the events. I'm not sure if there's any web based calendar that provides that capability.

[sfgfoundation]

I just tested this again to make sure it still works and events correctly appeared in my calendar on ical-mac. I think there might be a problem with your settings. Could you double-check the Publish settings of your calendar in VueMinder? Try putting a filename at the end of the destination location (example: "http://public.ical-mac.com/sfgfoundation/calendars/calendar.ics"). Also, ensure your username/password are specified and the calendar is set to automatically publish. Please let me know if it still doesn't work after making those changes.

Note, ical-mac doesn't show the published event descriptions, so you won't be able to see pictures within the events. I'm not sure if there's any web based calendar that provides that capability.

Ok. So adding .ics at the end did it!. One last question. If you can't see the event descriptions, what is the purpose of the calendar. In other words, if you can't read any information about the event except the name, what is the purpose of the calendar? What is the purpose of VueMinder having all these capabilities if noone can use them when viewing the calendar created with this good looking technology? Obviously I am missing something because VueMinder wouldn't have all these capabilities if the clients couldn't use them. How do you publish a calendar with this technology in such a way that users can see all the hard work you are doing? Thanks so much for your patience with my novice questions. Alan

[VueSoft]

You could try syncing your calendar with Google Calendar, instead of publishing to ical-mac. Be sure to make the calendar public so other people can see it. That will allow your event descriptions to appear on the web. Or, you could search for other alternative iCalendar hosts. The ical-mac host is free, and as such, it has some limitations. There are paid hosts which are probably a lot better and will allow your descriptions to appear, but I haven't tried any of these and can make no recommendations.