Whole day wasted on calendar system
What a learning experience!
Today was the day we can all do without. It goes without saying that it was total frustration but it has ended with success. There’s no doubt that you have to have persistence if you want to succeed with Joomla.
Today I was integrating easyphpcalendar (beware of ANYTHING that has easy in its name!) which is really straightforward with conventional html and php. In joomla it’s something else.
There are two ways to integrate easyphpcalendar into a Joomla site
- put the calendar into a wrapper
- use Jumi to integrate easyphpcalendar into your Joomla website
Here are some things to ponder before you start.
Putting easyphpcalender into a wrapper on a Joomla site works very well. However, there is one massive proviso your need before you start. Joomla sites appear to have a server security mechanism that prevents them form running scripts that are not directly within the main directory. If you are puzzled by that here’s a simple explanation, if you don’t have the easyphpcalendar installed in a place where Joomla can access it you will get an error message saying that the file you tried to access does not exist. It looks like a server path issue, so I guess that there is a path problem. When I moved the whole installation of easyphpcalendar it worked fine.
Using a wrapper works just how you would expect. Make a php file that shows the calendar you want, view it with a browser, then insert it into a wrapper, Joomla shows it as an iframe and it works just how you expect. If there is a problem you may get a 404 file not found error showing in the iframe, but the system still continues to work.
An alternative that I tried is to put the easyphpcalendar output into a module postion in Joomla, using the Jumi module to encapsulate the script. There are serious disadvantages to this that you need to be aware of before you start.
Jumi is a 3rd party script that lets you put things into modules, it works well, BUT if the script fails your whole site will stop serving! Wow that’s not convenient. See the separate post on embedding easyphpcalendar into a joomla site with jumi module.