The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

new version allows you to add events from the backend and also has fixed the HTML problem when editing events - both two of my biggest gripes on the original release! A good component made better! Well done guys! Two Thumbs Up!

JCal Pro 1.5 beta has been released, and its a great improvement over the 1.0.x versions. A couple of bugs seemed to have dissapeared (always good!) and you can now manage events in the backend too. The 1.5 new features list seems well thought out, and the inclusion of permissions (almost a necessity) is a great inclusion.

This is a great calendar component/module and is really easy to use. All the bits have a ton of configuration options, and the the ability to upload new themes is a real bonus.

Still a few issues unfortunately (nothing serious), but this is still a beta so thats par for the course.

I am a complete CS/Joomla! noob. But a long time IT professional who is just now getting to know the flexibility and power of Open Source. Can you say front huh what? I needed a simple to install and configure calendar that provided an easy way to be edited via the front end. I litteraly installed and tested 6 different calendars. I was at wits end and ready to give up. I decided to try one more and that was JCal Pro. All I can say is WOW! It looks great. Configuration was a snap. Anyone out there thinking of writing your own extensions needs to take a look at this for how to do it the right way. I had this calendar installed and working in about 30 minutes. The mini calendar and Latest Events menu items are awesome. I simply can not say enough good things about this calender! I am not a CS kinda guy so anything that I can easily be set up and configured via Joomla! admin is a neccessity. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't look good. The bugs in JCal Pro are more of an annoyance than anything. You can work around them. The only thing I would like to see is the ability to edit events from the backend. It currently only allows editing the categories. But hey if thats the only problem I have....

JCalPro is the nicest event calendar for Joomla, end of story. There is enthusiasm in the way it is presented and developed. Its functionality straight out of the box is fine, maybe not overwhelming, but more than sufficient for most users.

That being said, there is at least one annoying bug: editing an already existing event results in html code showing up. There was also a language-specific issue, but I got that sorted out with the help of a new language file.

The Really Good News is that the developer promised a new version with these bugs fixed And with a few nice additions in a matter of a week. So, I'll definitely be back at, say, the end of January... Really looking forward for this splendid piece of software to become even more splendid!

Ludo

I've tried them all - truly. This one is the only calendar that looks and works great.

I have to agree with Sooty57 - wait on this one until the next version (this review is of v1.0.1). While it is a really nicely featured and great looking calendar, any time you revise an event - any edit at all, you get HTML displayed instead of formatted content. I mean, who enters their content perfectly the very first time?

There can be no doubt that this is one of the best looking calendar components around, and the upcoming events module is a great idea..... but it's not yet ready for use on a live site.

Editing existing events causes html code to be displayed in descriptions. After looking on the user forum, this is a known bug. The suggestion was to delete the event and recreate it. I tried this and just got a database error everytime.

Also, having to add events from the front end, with no back end facility, is a bit of a pain.

I will probably use this component on my sites when it is sorted as it's just soooo pretty, but for now I just can't trust it.

I was wondering when someone would make the ExtCal work like this. The best looking calendar, and functioning as ExtCal should have. Great job guys. Only a few suggestions at first look.
1. Have also a "Yearly" view. Can't find anything in the past unless you search.
2. For the mini-cal, you need to be able to click on the Month also to go to the full calendar, not just the phrase in the Latest Events mod.
3. Add Events Years need to have more in both directions, past and future, not just 2005-2009. Need like 2000-2020 at least.
Thanks and cudos....

A great new implementation of the very nicely designed extcalender events component, with a new backend control and a few other tweaks. Visually it's the events calendar of choice because it looks stunning and works well straight out of the box. The ease with which users can enter new events is particularly good. The backend control panel is a great bonus, but there are still a few niggles inherited from the previous incarnations:

I'd love to be able to have a separate "venue" field for an event - this is particularly important when displayed in the "latest events" module. The repeating event function is pretty rudimentary, for example not allowing for repeats say on the third Thursday of each month, or bi-weekly. Events entered as monthly also bring in a few anomalies.

The otherwise excellent "latest events" module does not format start and end times consistently as default (eg 20:00 - 2100 instead of 20:00 - 21:00. The module could also be a little more customizable.

The mini-cal component also looks great, but this in particular would benefit from the ability to adopt the general site-wide stylesheet rather than its own formatting if required.

All in all an excellent reworking of a great calendar. For me it beats JCal and the others, and I'm sure will be even better in its next version. Thanks for keeping extcal alive!

I set up another Joomla site and needed a calendar. I checked yesterday and none of the ones available yesterday at joomla extenstions really seemed to fit the bill, so I resorted to another open source calendar and used it in a wrapper.

Today I come looking for another extension and check the new ones available and low and behold JCal is here. So I installed it and the modules to give it a spin. Initially I was very impressed. However after getting it installed and set up I found there is no way to add events from the administrator side. The only way to add events is from the front end and that only when you set who can submit events to 'Public Frontend'.

You can do so if you use a login for the site, but on this site I do not use the Joomla login form. I simply wanted the calendar to show events, I didnt want anyone to be able to do so from the front end and I dont want to use a login for the site.

In addition, it fails validation horribly. If that is important to you, as it is to me, then this may not be what you want. It seems odd to me that the Joomla team can create an entire CMS that validates out of the box yet the majority of the extensions available for Joomla will cause errors.

I probably would have used JCal anyway even with the validation issues if it were possible to add events from the administrator side. Its unfortunate as it is a really nice calendar out of the box so to speak, but for now I'll stick with my open source calendar in a wrapper.