BosDates v4.5 Manual
Calendar Setup
In order to setup the calendars for your calendar system, you will need to login to your System Administrator account. You may login by clicking "Login/Create Account" on the top menu of your calendar. After you are logged in, you will be presented with the user account screen. On the top menu, you should see a link labeled "Admin". Clicking this link will take you to the admin control panel.
When you enter the admin control panel, you will see a list of links in the left hand column. This section of the manual deals with the "Manage Calendars" section of your control panel. After clicking the "Manage Calendars" link, you will be presented with a page which will allow you to create, edit, and delete calendars.
Only users assigned to the System Admininistrator usergroup, or who are in a user group with the Panel Access, and Manage Calendars flags set to yes are able to view this section of the admin panel.
The calendar system is set up so you may create as many sub-calendars as you require, and embed calendars into each other so that events posted to calendar #2, can also be seen on calendar #1. This will allow you to break your events down to relavent sections/regions/zones/interests, what ever you need. Calendar #1, will always be the first calendar shown to the visitor when they view the calendar. This calendar is considered the master calendar.
If the usergroup you are assigned to has the "Create/delete calendars" flag set to yes, you will see a section on this screen which will allow you to create a new sub-calendar. To create a new sub-calendar, simply enter the title for the new calendar in the box provided and click Process. A new calendar will be created, with the same settings as the master calendar. After you have created the new calendar, it will appear in the list of available calendars. The newly created calendar will also appear in the System Admins list of allowed calendars, and in the list of allowed calendars for the person who created the calendar.
The current calendars section will show you a list of all of the different calendars which are set up in your calendar system. Under each calendar title, you will see a url. This url is the direct link to the calendar, so you can provide your users with links to the calendars which interests them. Beside each calendar title will be three links. The activate/deactivate links will allow you to temporarily hide a calendar from users, and to re-enable a previously hidden calendar. The edit link will allow you to set up the options for the calendar, and the delete link will allow you to remove a calendar. You cannot remove the master calendar.
When you go to edit the existing calendars, you will see a wide variety of options which are available to you.
One of the first things you will notice is the "Private calendar" and "Password" fields. If you wish to set up a calendar so it does not appear in any pull down lists, set the private calendar selector to no. Setting this to yes will also prevent visitors from subscribing to the calendar. If you wish to password protect a calendar so the visitor must first enter a password to view the calendar, enter your desired password into the box provided.
The next section of controls, defines which style to display the calendar, and which view modes to allow. The style selections will allow you to choose from traditional block mode, a business like list, or a hybrid mode which creates blocks for only days which have events. The view modes section will allow you to choose which view modes the user may select from such as 2 week, 4 week, quarterly and more. The default view mode will be the view mode displayed when the user first visits the calendar.
The "Event display" and "Hover event display" sections will allow you to choose which items from events to show on the calendar. You do not need to select everything, as the visitor can click on the event to see the complete details for the events. This section only determines what is to be displayed in the calendar cells.
If you wish to embed events which are posted to other calendars into this calendar, then select the calendars to embed in the box provided. To select multiple calendars, simply hold down CTRL while clicking the calendars you wish to embed. To remove a previously embedded calendar, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the calendar you no longer wish to embed. Some web browsers require you to click elsewhere on the page to finalize your selections, so click any "white space" to make your web browser understand your intentions, before submitting the page for processing.
If you wish to allow visitors to post events to your calendar, then set the "Allow guests to post events" selector to yes. If you wish to require users to be registered before they can post an event, set "Allow anonymous events" to no. This will require the user to create an account in the calendar system before they can post an event to your calendar. Anonymously submitted events will require admin approval before they are posted to your calendar system if you have "Auto approve anonymous submissions" to yes.
If you wish to prevent events from over lapping, set the "Allow events to overlap" to no. This will ensure that no two events can take place on the same day at the same time.
You may also restrict how many images and attachments are allowed per event by using the provided selectors.
The "From address" section is used by the calendar system when it sends out emails, such as reminders. Please enter a valid email address here.
If you do not wish visitors to be able to subscribe to the calendar, set the "Allow guests to subscribe" to no.
The appearance section of this screen will allow you to upload a graphical/flash banner for the calendar, choose which stylesheet to use from the list of available stylesheets, and allow you to add additional HTML content to your calendar. The page header and page footer sections will allow you to place HTML content into calendar. For instance if you wanted to place a menu system at the top of your calendar, you would place that HTML into the box presented. Through the use of these two boxes, you are able to wrap content all the way around the calendar, making it appear seemless with your existing web site. For more information on how to wrap content around the calendar, please click here. You may also opt to instruct the calendar to load an external HTML or PHP file to use as the header/footer. This is done by entering "file:/physical/path/on/server/to/the/filetorun.php" into the header box. You must enter the physical path, and not the url to the file in order for this to work. Please not that you may not enter PHP code into the boxes, nor can you combine HTML content with the file:/ command.
The BosDates calendar allows you to define up to 10 custom fields to hold specific information based upon your requirements. These fields may be set up as text entries, check boxes, radio button selections and more. For more detail on this section, and a option field generator, please click here.
The final section of the edit screen will allow you to choose which event categories you wish to use for this calendar. This will allow you to give your users yet another way to find events they are interested in. To select multiple categories, hold down CTRL while clicking the categories you wish to allow. Likewise, to remove a previously chosen category, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the category you wish to remove. Some web browsers require you to click elsewhere on the page to finalize your selections, so click any "white space" to make your web browser understand your intentions, before submitting the page for processing.