JCal Pro 
Version
3.1 (last update on Apr 17, 2012)
Rating
Compatibility
Votes
Favoured
211
License
GPLv2 or later
Commercial
Type
Views
863856
Date Added
23 November 2006
Editor's Note
- This extension requires registration to download.
- Access to this GNU GPL-licensed archive requires a subscription fee
Images
MOST of the time upgrades are better than their predecessors however in the case of Jcal 3, nothing could be further from the truth. Simple things such as days of the week displaying when I select it not to, or THE UGLY DEFAULT THEME that the Devs REFUSE to tell anyone how to customize, and some useful features such as old popup event has now been Taken away.
Long story short, I AM INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED with the Devs, the help although not rude, is useless when you really want to know something. The forums are moderated to the point that useful information is blocked/closed or removed by the Devs... all in an attempt to make us buy a more expensive upgrade package... one that still will not have nice themes NOR the ability to customize. DONT BUY. DEVS... POST A LINK TO A METHOD TO UPDATE THE THEMES IF I'M WRONG. I will not be paying anymore for your products, thanks. Thought Joomla was all about open source... WRONG HERE!
Long story short, I AM INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED with the Devs, the help although not rude, is useless when you really want to know something. The forums are moderated to the point that useful information is blocked/closed or removed by the Devs... all in an attempt to make us buy a more expensive upgrade package... one that still will not have nice themes NOR the ability to customize. DONT BUY. DEVS... POST A LINK TO A METHOD TO UPDATE THE THEMES IF I'M WRONG. I will not be paying anymore for your products, thanks. Thought Joomla was all about open source... WRONG HERE!
Owner's reply
Hello and i'm sorry the product was not right for you. Unfortunately, I cannot locate your support threads with the information you have provided.
However, I would say that the new theme system in JCal Pro is superior in nearly every way. Themes can be installed in the Joomla installer as a normal extension. Themes can be modified directly in the following location:
/ROOT/media/jcalpro/themes
If you have a custom theme, you'll want to create a unique theme for yourself otherwise you will lose your changes when u upgrade.
To NOT lose changes, we suggest then that u actually use HTML overrides to edit the views. This is method is not affected by upgrades.
We certainly are not worried about up-selling upgrade packages with premium themes. However, our support is not a custom programming service either. If you don't have the skills to edit PHP for example, you'll want to hire an expert to perform those changes.
Finally, we have a 30-day refund policy. Please contact customer service if you still desire one.
Regards,
Victor Drover
Anything Digital
I used JCal Pro since years for a magazine website with about 750 events each month. Older entries got deleted, so I had about 3.000 entries in the database without any problem. It had all the functions I needed and handling was very easy. I was really happy with JCal, because it's was serving an important part of the website.
Since the Update to JCal3 things changed. The script stops after the maximum execution time, 120 seconds in this case, with 1.300 events imported. The latest version is incredible slow, and that's not the only bug.
Support is gentle but not helpful in any way. After 8 weeks I decided to change and use another component.
If you could try this component without paying the fee it would be ok, but I think you should be warned before you waste your money.
Since the Update to JCal3 things changed. The script stops after the maximum execution time, 120 seconds in this case, with 1.300 events imported. The latest version is incredible slow, and that's not the only bug.
Support is gentle but not helpful in any way. After 8 weeks I decided to change and use another component.
If you could try this component without paying the fee it would be ok, but I think you should be warned before you waste your money.
Owner's reply
Hello and i'm sorry the product was not right for you.
In fact, we have recently rolled out a massive performance update. This is currently working very smoothly on http://events.joomla.org/
I hope you will give the latest version a try and see if it works for you.
Regards,
Victor Drover
Anything Digital
I tried a couple and I've also developed sites with Drupal and WordPress. I have been very pleased with jCal Pro and have used it successfully on a couple of sites. I'm anticipate upgrading to Joomla 2.5 soon and will definitely be purchasing the upgrade.
Owner's reply
The upgrade is definitely worth it, and we've just launched a great new feature: Locations!
I have been using JCal pro for a few years now and it easily does what we want it to do!
Would be great to see some registration plugins, or a bit more integration into other Joomla components though :)
Would be great to see some registration plugins, or a bit more integration into other Joomla components though :)
Owner's reply
We are working hard on that in the Joomla 1.7 version. For Joomla 1.5, try RSVP that we sell, it integrates with JCal Pro.
definitely good tool. didnt have any issues with it so far, but i really wish the design was a little better, and had more options with that
Owner's reply
Thanks for the review. We also have premium themes that really look sharp. Hope that helps: anything-digital.com/jcal-pro/premium-themes.html
I have got to know and to like JCal pro for quite some years now. Whereas I never really liked the design of the calendar, I always appreciated its functionalitiy. It is somewhat like those cars that are reliable but not necessarily nice to see.
I have been a paying subscriber for two terms, which I believed would ensure me staying up-to-date with all I needed.
Now, version 1.7 is out and I NEED to upgrade our website asap - there are now so many functionalities available we have been waiting for. But I seem to have to postpone that launch because my "commercial" extension is not up to date (whereas many of the non-commercial ones we are using indeed are)...
As the calendar is an important element of our web site, we cannot really run it without. That was, as I told before the reason for my my buying something called PRO, in order to be sure.
But then: PRO is not a protected word, anyone can use it. Being two verions behind is, however, not pro, sorry.
I have been a paying subscriber for two terms, which I believed would ensure me staying up-to-date with all I needed.
Now, version 1.7 is out and I NEED to upgrade our website asap - there are now so many functionalities available we have been waiting for. But I seem to have to postpone that launch because my "commercial" extension is not up to date (whereas many of the non-commercial ones we are using indeed are)...
As the calendar is an important element of our web site, we cannot really run it without. That was, as I told before the reason for my my buying something called PRO, in order to be sure.
But then: PRO is not a protected word, anyone can use it. Being two verions behind is, however, not pro, sorry.
Owner's reply
Thanks for your comments. We are working on a complete re-write an expect JCal 3 for Joomla 1.7 out this Fall. It will be worth the wait.
I installed JCalPro and had two issues. I was getting lots of 404 errors reported from my SEF manager and Google, also my sitemap would blow up from 27 pages to over 19,000 even though I excluded the components directory. I tried to resolve both of these problems in their support forum without any luch. The help was subpar for paying $70 as the responses we few and far between. I just removed the calendar and hope it's easy to get my money back to try to find another calendar. Hopeful
Owner's reply
Hi there. Just wanted to write a quick note and confirm that your refund was processed as requested on July 14.
I'm sorry JCal Pro didn't suit your needs. We were unable to reproduce the error you were experiencing, making a solution very difficult to find.
Thanks again for you interest in our products.
I've used this component many times for various clients of ours, and it's always worked out pretty well.
- Comprehensive administration
- Nice layouts [and relatively easy to customize also]
- Good selection of modules
I will say that for those who are submitting complaints about bugs that are actually feature requests, I would not pay heed to their comments, statements, or ignorance.
The point is, you paid for something that has features at that given time. Just because something doesn't have one particular, and in some cases, very small item [such as a "Location" field - have you thought about putting the location in the description field???], that does not mean that their product is not functioning correctly, or is buggy [same difference]. That just means that you should:
1. Request the feature
2. Get support for the feature or offer to hire them to mod their component to your needs
3. Do it yourself if it's so easy to add to the component
Overall, great functioning component, and I would recommend time and again to others looking for a comprehensive, Joomla! based calendar.
Cheers
- Comprehensive administration
- Nice layouts [and relatively easy to customize also]
- Good selection of modules
I will say that for those who are submitting complaints about bugs that are actually feature requests, I would not pay heed to their comments, statements, or ignorance.
The point is, you paid for something that has features at that given time. Just because something doesn't have one particular, and in some cases, very small item [such as a "Location" field - have you thought about putting the location in the description field???], that does not mean that their product is not functioning correctly, or is buggy [same difference]. That just means that you should:
1. Request the feature
2. Get support for the feature or offer to hire them to mod their component to your needs
3. Do it yourself if it's so easy to add to the component
Overall, great functioning component, and I would recommend time and again to others looking for a comprehensive, Joomla! based calendar.
Cheers
JCal Pro has become an important part of our district's school website. After some "get to know you" time, it's been a real pleasure to work with. The aesthetic appeal fit in nicely with our site and the functionality has proven very effective. It's really easy to use and any problems I've had in configuring, anything-digital's support/forums have gotten me through it.
I highly recommend this extension as the best event management tool out there. Thanks for the great tool!
I highly recommend this extension as the best event management tool out there. Thanks for the great tool!
I purchased this calendar because it looked the best of all the demos I tried and fits in nicely with the layout of my site as it is CSS based. I have only one problem with this extension however it is a major issue - there is no Location field and this is an issue which has been reported on their support forums for several years and never implemented - most of the questions relating to this have been ignored on the forum (e.g. http://dev.anything-digital.com/Forum/Feature-Requests/2855-HOW-to-add-new-fields-/) and the most recent response I could find from the developers (which was way down the search results) said that there are no plans to release any updates until the next version which will be for Joomla 1.6.
Considering this is such a simple thing to fix - (seriously - how hard can it be to add a text field to a database???) it is amazing that this has never been corrected, especially as this is a commercial extension.
Until this is resolved I am unable to use this on my site and have wasted my money.
Considering this is such a simple thing to fix - (seriously - how hard can it be to add a text field to a database???) it is amazing that this has never been corrected, especially as this is a commercial extension.
Until this is resolved I am unable to use this on my site and have wasted my money.
I needed the very best Joomla calendar extension available for a project. There's about 3-4 full calendar components out there, some are free, I went with the most expensive available, JcalPro which starts at about $70. Since it was the nicest looking & had the Flex module.
For the most part it is a nice looking & functioning extension. However I ran into a very serious bug with the flex module that makes JCalPro just about useless to me. I've done a lot of trouble shooting to try to figure this out. I also put in a ticket on the developers forum for help, the developers took a long time to respond & I believe are just ignoring my problem at this point. At this point I don't see much choice other than to dispute the the charges for the extension with paypal & find another calendar extension.
I'm rating it two stars for the nice looking & functioning calendar. In my opinion, Joomla extension developers should charge whatever they need to for they extensions to cover the costs of providing excellent support to their customers.
For the most part it is a nice looking & functioning extension. However I ran into a very serious bug with the flex module that makes JCalPro just about useless to me. I've done a lot of trouble shooting to try to figure this out. I also put in a ticket on the developers forum for help, the developers took a long time to respond & I believe are just ignoring my problem at this point. At this point I don't see much choice other than to dispute the the charges for the extension with paypal & find another calendar extension.
I'm rating it two stars for the nice looking & functioning calendar. In my opinion, Joomla extension developers should charge whatever they need to for they extensions to cover the costs of providing excellent support to their customers.
I was yet another casualty of the disappearance of the Thyme calendar product. After downloading and testing, I settled on JCal & purchased a matching subscription. Installation and set-up was easy, adding repeating events, exceptions, and maintaining the calendar was very straight-forward, and overall the tool worked flawlessly. Support was good, almost all of the needed answers could be found on the free forum.
The one limitation I hit was RSS support. I need to be able to syndicate upcoming events (i.e., have a feed where subscribers would see a summary of all upcoming events for the next X number of days.) Sadly, there's no way to accomplish this with JCal without hacking some of your own code.
Apart from the one caveat above, I recommend the product.
The one limitation I hit was RSS support. I need to be able to syndicate upcoming events (i.e., have a feed where subscribers would see a summary of all upcoming events for the next X number of days.) Sadly, there's no way to accomplish this with JCal without hacking some of your own code.
Apart from the one caveat above, I recommend the product.
I have used this calendar on 2 commercial websites. One of which has a calendar for each department. There are 9 different departments that have their own calendar. Very handy with the drop-down sort by calendar option. If only the category color could be applied to the font for the event. Also an email event option would be a nice enhancement. Overall this is the most professional calendar extension out there. Thanks!
JCal Pro is probably one of the best calendars out there except for the fact that they forgot something that is extremely important, in fact so important that it might make this worthless to a lot of businesses. While they have provided a nice interface to add repeating events and now the ability to repeat them on specific days of the month like 2nd Saturday, there is no way to edit just one of those events in the string. For a dance studio client of mine, periodically their Monday classes might be canceled because of a holiday for example. To get around the problem, you have to delete the event and then reenter it.
Owner's reply
Thanks for the review katandmouse. However, JCal Pro definitely supports recurring event exceptions. Its very simple. Once your recurring event is created, just delete/unpublish the date that is the exception. All the other occurrences remain intact. You can do this from either the admin interface or the frontend. The documentation on this is found here (login required): http://dev.anything-digital.com/Documentation/JCal-Pro/Recurring-Events-and-Exceptions.html
I thought this component was quite well designed, especially with the community builder plugins and such. One thing that it lacks is the ability for users to register for the calendar (although I suppose that is more of an events deal), but besides that, this componet was very nice.
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