Code & Scripts: Applications: ASP Events Calendar

Code & Scripts: Applications: ASP Events Calendar - Deluxe

ASP Events Calendar - Deluxe (version 3.10, w/ International Date/Language support)

You can click any of the dates on either Calendar to view the events scheduled that day, or see a bullet-list of all the (currently selected) month's events displayed under the large Calendar. By setting a few configuration options in one file, you can completely customize the ASP Events Calendar to suit your needs.

By the way, by just changing one of the configuration settings (changing the words "Events Calendar" to "My Journal" or whatever), this application can also be used as a "blogger" (web-log) or an online, daily journal. I'm pretty much giving away the store by selling this thing for this price, given the fact that similar applications can cost quite a bit more, and those third-party service providers (blogger hosts) can charge you about the same amount per month...

When you're ready to purchase this product, just use the buttons provided to add this item to my PayPal Shopping Cart, follow the instructions provided, and then we'll send the item(s) you've ordered by e-mail! (Note: For only $20, you get the complete application (along with free upgrades), which you can configure and "plug-in" within minutes -- saving you many times this amount in development costs.)

Calendar & Admin DEMO: Note: Changes will not be saved in these demo sites.

ASP Events Calendar - Deluxe Features and Documentation: (below)

Features
System Requirements
Install & Configuration
Troubleshooting
Other Notes

[ ASP Events Calendar - Deluxe Features ]

New! The Calendar Now Supports ALL International Date-Formats
- You can now specify the international LCID Code for your region in the settings file, and the calendar will automatically figure out your date format (month, day or year-first)
- The Calendar now also displays the month and day names using the correct local language!
New! Event-Approval and related Admin Options:
- Events can be posted directly to the Calendar by the public, or hidden until you (or the authorized approver) reviews the item.
- Use either the Admin area, or the automatic e-mail notifications to view and approve (or remove) newly submitted events requiring approval.
- Note: If the e-mail notification option is turned on, the system uses the standard CDONTS e-mail component installed on all Microsoft IIS servers.
Remote Administration:
- Update the Calendar online, from anywhere, using the Administration Web page provided.
- With the Administrative tools, you can (1.) Add/Edit/Delete Events, (2.) Delete all Events at once (scary, but sometimes necessary) or (3.) Change the Calendar's Admin Username/Password.
View Calendar alone, or include on other pages:
- You can insert or include the small Calendar (shown at top- right), complete with clickable links, on any page on your site. Or view the large Calendar directly, where every date links to the complete list of events scheduled that day.
Many Public and Display Options:
- Visitors can view any past or future months and years using the clickable arrows on each Calendar page.
- The public can add Events to the Calendar (if you've set that switch to be turned on), and the Calendar automatically creates clickable links around any URLs or e-mail addresses in the entered text.
- Display and view an unlimited number of Events on every page.
Many configuration and data/back-end options:
- Display or hide a bullet-list of the entire month's events (which appears under the Calendar by default).
- Set Public or Admin-ONLY privileges. You can allow the general public to add Events to the Calendar, or not. (the default setting allows only the primary Administrator to do Add events).
- You can control the font-settings and color-scheme for the entire application from one single file ("styles.asp").
- You can include your own site headers, page-top-tools, configuration files, left-nav and footers on every page. Placeholders for several "server-side-includes" have already been provided (commented-out by default), so that the Events Calendar can be integrated - seamlessly - with the rest of your site.
- Ten (10) background color options are already included (11, if you count white) and can be set with just one switch.
- When adding Events, you don't need to worry about writing any HTML around links or e-mail addresses. The Calendar automatically creates clickable links for you!
- Choose one of several available database and connection options, using the included Access or Access2000 (default) files (with or without DSN), SQL, Jet OLEDB and DSN.
Ready-to-go, in minutes!
- The text and details on every page, the overall design, color-scheme, page-layout and graphics are all completely "production-ready". You don't have to change anything (except to put your site name in the settings/configuration file), and the ASP Events Calendar is ready-to-go, and will still look like it was custom built just for you and your Web site!

[ System Requirements & Tools ]

A Web site host that supports Active Server Pages
- To view the web pages, either on your local machine or at your Web site, you'll need to be running a Web server which supports ASP pages (files with *.asp extensions). Most later versions of Windows include the "Personal Web Server (PWS)" which supports ASP, and your site host should clearly indicate which systems and platforms they support. As long as they mention "Microsoft", "IIS", "NT Server", "ASP", "Active Server Pages", or "Windows 2000" you should be fine.
A text-editor (Notepad will work fine)
- To edit these files, you only need a text-editor to change the settings/variables in one file (settings.asp). It's hard to predict what might happen if you use a visual webpage editor (like FrontPage, GoLive or DreamWeaver) to change any of these files. Those editors tend to re-write code and break stuff. Also, if you're not familiar with ASP/VBscript, and do not have a more advanced text editor (which provides visual indicators and color-coding when viewing a file), just be sure to leave commented text (beginning with (') apostrophes) unchanged, and only change variables in-between quotes. For example:
  theSiteName = "Your Site Name" ' change Your Site Name
Host support for Microsoft Access 2000 or SQL databases
- By default, this application uses an Access 2000 database file.
- ASP Events Calendar is also SQL-ready. If you're familiar with SQL Server, and would prefer using the SQL database (instead of Access), the connection-strings are already available and you just need to (1.) update the variables in the settings/configuration file, and (2.) use Access 2000's "Upsizing Wizard" or other remote database administration tools to copy the database structure and data to your SQL db.
- You don't need an ODBC or DSN connection!

[ Installing ASP Events Calendar ]

Unzip aspEventsCal.zip into a folder that will be used/copied on your site (these files are currently configured to work in a "/calendar/" sub-folder).

Note: The Calendar content, images and scripts have been organized into sub-folders. When un-zipping the files into the calendar (or whatever name) folder, make sure your archive program preserves the existing folder structure (in "WinZip", the option is "Use Folder Names").

When you're done, your folder structure should look like this:

/calendar (for the main calendar scripts, pages and settings files)
     ./admin (login to this area to administer the calendar)
     ./database (holds the Access2000 database and connection scripts)
     ./default_includes (the default header, footer, leftnav and page "includes")
     ./documentation (install instructions and license agreement)
     ./images (this is for the graphics used by the Calendar)
Open the included settings.asp file with a text-editor and make sure to configure the variables as needed. This file controls all the application functions for the ASP Events Calendar.
New! In order to support international and all other date formats (day, month or year-first) the Calendar now includes an option you can set which specifies the LCID (Locale Identifier) Code for your region or language. Just find the following section in the configuration file (calendar_settings.asp), and use the included LCID Code Chart to find the correct code for your application. Additional tools have been provided in the Calendar's Admin area so you can determine and use the current settings for your web site server, if necessary.

    ' *** International/US Date-Format and LCID Code:
             LCIDCode = 1033
    '       Note: 1033 is the default setting (English, U.S.)
Use a text editor to make any necessary updates to styles.asp (this file controls the look-and-feel of the application). If you're familiar with stylesheets, you can alternately just add the calendar styles to your own stylesheets and then either remove the reference/include to the above file in all the other files, or just edit styles.asp to completely remove all of the internal contents of the file, save it, and then leave the file in-place.
Make sure the database file has Read/Write/Script(/Execute) permissions (this will happen automatically on your local machine, but you'll probably need to request this from your site host (ISP) if they don't already provide you administrative tools to do so yourself. See details below.
Open your Web browser and view the site/folder where the ASP Events Calendar has been placed (ex., http://localhost/calendar).

"/calendar/index.asp" is the web page people use to view the large Calendar, and "/calendar/admin/index.asp" is where you'd log-in to add/edit/delete events, or change the username/password for this application.
Note: The default Username and Password is "admin" and "password"
IMPORTANT: If you don't change the default Admin username/password, then anyone else who has downloaded these scripts could easily figure out how to access your calendar... so change them!!!
To include the small Calendar, or have it displayed on any other page on your site, you'll need to use a standard server-side-include (a bit of HTML that tells one page to load the contents of another). Basically, edit the page(s) where you want to small Calendar to be displayed, and insert this code:



Note: "/calendar/" is the folder name where you've placed the Events Calendar
Lastly, every page already includes placeholders so you can load your own site headers and footers, page-tools and other navigation. These placeholders are "server-side-includes" (an HTML comment that tells one page to load the contents of another) which have already been provided, so that the Events Calendar can be integrated - seamlessly - with the rest of your site. All you need to do is add your content to any of the (currently empty) files below, and the ASP Events Calendar appearance and layout will reflect the changes when you view the web page(s).

default_includes/header.asp (include your header, logo and any other style specifications here)
default_includes/leftnav.asp (already contains example HTML code, which you'd need to un-comment to view)
default_includes/pagetoolstop.asp (for any navigation or page-top code)
default_includes/pagetoolsbottom.asp (for any navigation or page-bottom code)
default_includes/footer.asp (for your navigation, footer links, copyright statement, etc.)
Alternately, you can just view the source code for the four files noted below, and update the HTML in-between the commented lines as follows:



(your header and side-nav HTML and graphics would go here)



....the calendar scripts go in the middle, here...



(your page-bottom and footer HTML and graphics would go here)



...and here are the four files which would need to be updated with your site's look-and-feel (if you don't just use the default appearance)..

event_addedit.asp (the page which displays the form used to add/edit/update events)
event_approval.asp (the page used to review, approve or remove submitted events - if Admin Approval is required)
event_display.asp (displays the event(s) for the selected date)
index.asp (the main Calendar page which displays the large Calendar and the event list - if that option is turned on)

[ Troubleshooting ]

Virtually all problems encountered during the set-up, configuration and usage of the ASP Events Calendar can be traced to the following issues: (1.) The database file must have both read and write permissions set, (2.) one or more of the standard Microsoft IIS/ASP Web server components aren't available on some non-standard, non-Microsoft IIS/ASP servers, or (3.) you're trying to load the Calendar on non-ASP pages, or files that do not have the .asp extension.

Here's some details and tips related to the possible issues below:

The database file (calendar2000.mdb) must have its permissions set to Read-Write (rw-). Visitors should also have access to "write" to the database in order for the scripts to function.
Note: Many site hosts provide administrative tools so you can set permissions on files yourself. Otherwise, contact your site host and request the above.
If you've enabled e-mail notification (under the Admin Approval options), and receive any initialization errors when an Event is submitted, either (1.) your hosted environment either does not have the CDONTS e-mail component, (2.) the specified sender and/or recipient e-mail addresses are not in the correct format (eg., "you@example.net"), or (3.) the site's host might have an anti-SPAM e-mail configuration which requires that the "From" e-mail address be from the same domain where this application is hosted (eg., if the site is www.example.net, then the "From" e-mail might need to be "someone@example.net").
Some LCID Codes might cause problems in the Calendar display. If this happens, try using alternate region codes which still display the correct language you require. Note: This is one of only a handful of applications which has ever been designed for international use, and I'm just one person... I can't possibly test all variations or LCID codes completely, but will immediately try to address any issues you might find related to a particular region or Code setting.
If, after setting the "calFolder" option in the configuration file (the folder where the calendar is located), you notice that the links and images display correctly but the database connection doesn't work, you'll need to manually specify the path to your database.

Open the file dsn.asp in the "database" sub-folder, and change line #16 so that the network/system path to the database is specified directly:

You'll need to change this line:
sPath = Request.ServerVariables("APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH") & Replace(calFolder, "/", "\") & "\database\"

to this (where the sPath = the path to the database folder for the Calendar on the site):
sPath = "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\calendar\database\"

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must put a backward slash ("\") at the end of the string.
If everything else appears to work, but you see an error message related to calendar_styles.asp or which says something like "Could not create MSWC object", then you need to remove the references in calendar_styles.asp which use a Microsoft IIS server component to determine the browser viewing the page. In other words, this particular file is designed to do some things automatically, in order to address some bugs and style differences between the Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers.

If the MS component which handles this is not available on your server, you'll need to remove reference to it in the style file as follows:

Replace all of the code between lines 20 and 37 in calendar_styles.asp with either of the code pieces below:

fontSmall = "x-small"
sComment = ""
eComment = ""

or, if you have mostly Netscape browsers hitting your site,

fontSmall = "small"
sComment = "/*"
eComment = "*/"
To troubleshoot other database or connection problems, open settings.asp with a text-editor, and make sure you have entered the correct calendar folder, database filename, database connection information, etc.
If you have changed this code and are running more than one database-dependent application from these pages, there may be conflicting variables (which would result in a "variable redefined" error message).
The calendar can only be included or displayed on pages with the *.ASP extension. Since ASP or VBScript is a server-side code, this file extension is necessary so the server knows it needs to process some script before sending the data/HTML to the browser.
Visual HTML editors (like FrontPage, DreamWeaver or GoLive) have a nasty tendency of re-writing HTML and breaking the code that makes these types of applications function correctly. If you absolutely must use one to edit the look and layout of these pages, do so at your own risk... BUT it is absolutely essential you only use a text editor, or Notepad when working with the primary configuration file, settings.asp.
Here's another tip: Chances are you're using Internet Explorer - which means you probably aren't seeing the actual messages from your server if you're having troubles. Just go to your "Tools : Internet Options" menu, and select the "Advanced" tab. Scroll down the Settings list a bit, uncheck the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" box, and then click "OK". The next time you start your browser, and encounter any browser or server error messages, you'll see the actual server error codes (which you can use to figure out the problem and solutions), as opposed to the nice browser messages which don't tell you anything.

[ Other Notes ]

Important: There are two images used to control the layout and appearance of the Events Tabs and large Calendar, which both use a particular color that is supposed to match the background of the page body where the item is displayed.

By setting the variable "PageBGColor" in settings.asp, you are not only setting the page background color, but you're also telling the application which colored set of graphics to load. In order to use a CUSTOM color (which is NOT one of the 10 options already provided), just review the details below and follow the instructions.

legend_<%=PageBGColor%>.gif is an image used to provide a nice background color for the fieldsets/legends (Events tabs). I would have used a style/HTML color, but fieldsets/legends are limited. The color of the top, non-transparent portion of this background image needs to match the background color of, in this case, the default page body background color (and "PageBGColor" variable) F8F8F1.

You can also just remove these two lines from the "fieldset" style in styles.asp and not worry about working with these legend images at all:

background-color: #F4F3E0; 
background-image: url('<%=calFolder%>legend_<%=PageBGColor%>.gif');

color_spacer_<%=PageBGColor%>.gif is an image used to create the floating, drop-shadow effect of the Calendar against the page background. The color of this image (and the filename) also needs to match the page body background color.

For CUSTOM colors: Just make a copy of any existing "legend...gif" and "color_spacer...gif", change the color (leaving any existing transparency), and make sure the filenames include the HEX color you used.

For example, if you want a red page background (HEX color "FF0000"), you'd need to create the two images using the filenames "legend_FF0000.gif" and "color_spacer_FF0000.gif", and then set the variable "PageBGColor" (in settings.asp) to "FF0000".

Please note, the only support provided for this application is included in this file. No e-mail or other online support is available.

Special Price: $20.00

Special Price: $20.00

Special Price: $20.00