PHP Event Calendar - Installation/Implementation problems?


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Junior Member

Posts: 3
Registered: 1/19/2007
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posted on 1/19/2007 at 03:20 PM

Installation/Implementation problems?

No doubt....I had obstacles to overcome at every step of the implementation..waste of my time...

Issues I encountered.:

1.Installtion appeared to work, but trying to access admin area throws php exceptions.

Cause: Wrong path hardcoded in files cl_files/data/global.php and cl_files/calendar.php upon installation...

Solution:change 'path to calendar files' in calendar.php and global.php ...should look like this in both files:

<?php // change if needed
// a path to calendar files

$PATHS=array(
"path_to_calendar" => "../cl_files/",
"path_to_calendar_img" => "../cl_files/img/",
"WEB_path_to_calendar_img" => "http://www.put your url here.com/your top level calendar directory name here/cl_files/img/",
"path_to_data" => "../cl_files/data/"
);
?>

2.Trying to bring up calendar on page throws php path errors. Cause:"Include path" to calendar.php from file you wish to have the calendar on is not recognized in call to:
<?
error_reporting (E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);
extract($HTTP_POST_VARS);
extract($HTTP_GET_VARS);
include '../cl_files/calendar.php';
?>.

Kludge solution that works: Move file with calendar on to cl_files directory and change this line:

include '../cl_files/calendar.php';

to this:

include 'calendar.php';

Also make sure your file that includes the calendar has a .php extension not an .html extension or the php engine on your server might not parse the php code in your doc.

3. When clicking on calendar link to bring up an event a 404 file not found error ocurs.

Cause: link to file 'show.php' looks for file in 'cl_files' directory, but show.php is erroneously installed to top level calendar directory(the directory you chose to install the application in). Solution: move file 'show.php' to the directory cl_files.

4. After adding events the calendar config starts dropping settings: Solution...I got tired of troubleshooting this program so I don't know. ;-)

I think(just my opinion) that the people offering this 'free' calendar have deliberately put in these 'bugs' so people will get fed up and just pay for the program.

However, I think this is a bad business strategy. I was interested in implementing this calendar for free on a not-for-profit site I am developing pro bono. If it worked well and installed smoothly I planned on buying a developers license for my paying customer's sites.

Now I have spent a couple of hours troubleshooting this product I don't know if it doesn't work properly by design and if a license is purchased these issues are not a concern, or if I will have to spend a bunch of time troubleshooting each instalation.

My time is too valuable to do this, so unless someone from tigra posts something here to change my mind, I will have to look at another solution, and they will have lost a client.

Good luck and thanks.

RL

tigra

Administrator

Posts: 1982
Registered: 6/17/2002
Location: US, CO
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posted on 1/19/2007 at 09:15 PM

on item 1: paths are not hard coded, those are the paths you specified / confirmed during the installation.
on item 2 & 3: caused by 1, in your solutions you deal with the result, not the cause
In posting at: http://www.softcomplex.com/forum/viewthread_3959/ I described the reasons why the installation sometimes may be more difficult that some expect
on item 4: not sure what you mean, once installed calendar should work fine. We'll investigate the problem you experience if you're still interested in using the script
on business strategy: the code for the commercial version is exactly the same as for the trial/non-profit version. There may be some issues with our products but we've NEVER been involved with any questionable practices. We don't have shareholders on our back, we can actually afford to do no evil.

Junior Member

Posts: 3
Registered: 1/19/2007
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posted on 1/19/2007 at 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tigra
on item 1: paths are not hard coded, those are the paths you specified / confirmed during the installation.

Actually they are the default paths supplied on installation. I did try to rectify the issue and installed the program several times. Each time I tried to ammend the relative path on install I got the red text and installation error asking me to please specify the correct path. I really had no choice...and what I meant was the paths are hardcoded after installation in the two files I mentioned...which they are.

Re:

Quote:

on item 2 & 3: caused by 1, in your solutions you deal with the result, not the cause

>>Not sure how I am supposed to do that without the flexibility to specify a path that differs from the default upon install?

As for item three, the installation program installed the file in the wrong directory; it had nothing to do with a path issue I caused because the paths were the default paths offered by the installation program. Any installation module should always install the files the pgm needs to use in the same hierarchy relative to the root directory of the program when default values are used....they didn't.

RE:
In posting at: http://www.softcomplex.com/forum/viewthread_3959/ I described the reasons why the installation sometimes may be more difficult that some expect.

>>I read it, but fail to see how it applies to my situation. You can try to blame it on user error until doomsday if it makes you feel better, but when a program doesn't work after installation and accepting the default values, the problem is not a user issue in my professional opinion.

Re:

Quote:

on item 4: not sure what you mean, once installed calendar should work fine. We'll investigate the problem you experience if you're still interested in using the script

>>In the calendar page configuration options...when I change colours etc. the program does not always remember the color changes...same with the time zone.

I appreciate the offer to investigate the problem, but upon evaluation I found that in order to format the events, there is no text editor functionality, which will cause a problem for my techno-peasant clients who don't know HTML.

RE:

Quote:

on business strategy: the code for the commercial version is exactly the same as for the trial/non-profit version. There may be some issues with our products but we've NEVER been involved with any questionable practices. We don't have shareholders on our back, we can actually afford to do no evil.

My apologies.

Junior Member

Posts: 3
Registered: 1/19/2007
Member Is Offline

posted on 1/20/2007 at 04:30 AM

***Addendum***

I wanted to make sure i wasn't judging this product too harshly, and although I am imminently qualified to install a php calendar(I program Java RMI modules for a software company that writes gaming software as my day job), I still wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong...or stupid ;-)

So I tried to install the calandar on one of my sites on another server. I thought I must have screwed up somehow the first few times because this time everything went as advertised...up until I tried to view an event I added. Then i had the same problem as last time....404 error when trying to bring up the events page. Same cause as last time as well, it was looking in the wrong folder for show.php. This indicates to me there is s definite problem. When a condition repeats itself on several independent installations on two different servers I think it would be hard to argue otherwise.

Soooooo....thinking I had done something idiotic on the first few installation attempts I tried to install the calendar again on the first server...guess what? I had the exact same problems I had the first time...

You guys can think whatever you want about the people who have problems installing/implementing and running your calendar pgm, but unless you are in denial you might want to try your installation files on a variety of servers, because it does not perform consistently on the two I tested it on, other than there were varying degrees of problems on both.

BTW Both were Linux servers.

Thanks and good luck with your product.

tigra

Administrator

Posts: 1982
Registered: 6/17/2002
Location: US, CO
Member Is Offline

posted on 1/20/2007 at 08:29 AM

We don't blame the problems on users and we don't think they do something idiotic to that causes the issues with the this component (with such attitude in technical support you could hang yourself after a week). Actually there wasn't a single case that we failed to to help install the component on the server that supports php.

re: 404 error: there was an issue with the default target and event list page preset in the control panel that we recently addressed. The problem was either this or paths again.