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Thoughts on WebEvent

last updated 12/15/01

WebEvent is a web calendaring system that you can run on your web server. It is written in Perl and uses a text file database system. Since people often ask me about my experience with it, I decided to post this page to my personal website.

Installation and Upgrades

The installation is very simple. Just type the install command and enter some data about your system at the prompt. It takes less than an hour to install and a few hours to setup to work perfectly . Upgrades are just a bit more challenging because you can't install directly over the current installation. You need to install into a separate directory and then copy over the main file and make sure that your cron jobs are set correctly.

Compatibility

I can't speak to other systems, but WebEvent has been rock solid in terms of compatibility on the Solaris 7 and Mac OS X Servers I've run it on.

Open Source Access

Access to the source code is great. It allows you to really customize the product for your situation. Mostly, you just need to edit one file to affect the way the output is presented on the screen.

Technical Support

Technical Support via e-mail is excellent. The few times I've emailed with questions or concerns, I've received a response within a day.

User Access and Setup

You need to have one main admin user. This user adds user accounts, new calendars, sets the defaults, etc. You can also allow a guest user to submit events to a calendar, pending approval by the specified calendar approval person.

Adding / Modifying Events

Adding events is very easy:

  1. Login
  2. Either click on the date you want the event added on or select the date from popup menus.
  3. Enter the event information.

That's all there is to it. To edit or delete, just select the date modify the info and click the appropriate button.

I did a small training session for the users of our calendar. You can see the materials at the URL below:

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/etu/training/materials/web_calendars/

For our calendars, I setup the events calendars with no restrictions on "over booking" because events take place in many different places. For our scheduling calendars, I set them up to prevent over booking. If someone tries to make a reservation for a time that is already being used, an error message pops up.

What's Missing?

There are a few things I would like to see in WebEvent:

I believe that they are working on the first and maybe the second items in my wish list.

Other Recommendations

You should purchase the yearly "support" contract that gives you access to new versions and to tech support.

Technical Advice

If you go for the Disable All WebEvent HTML Headers option to really make the calendar look like it belongs on your site, please note that the JavaScript pop-up windows will no longer work. To get around this, add the following code in the head section of your custom headers.


<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!-- Begin



    function popUp(URL,w,h) {

	winl = (screen.width - w) / 2;

	wint = (screen.height - h) / 2;

	

	day = new Date();

	id = day.getTime();

	eval("page" + id + " = window.open(URL, '" + id + "', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=1,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=1,width="+w+",height="+h+",top="+wint+",left="+winl+"');");

    }

// End -->

</script>

Summary

WebEvent works really well. It's about as easy to use as web based calendar software can be. It's also pretty fast (we've run it under both Solaris and Mac OS X Server and had good results). You are given access to the source code so it is easily customizable (if you know Perl) if you'd like to adapt it better to suit your needs.

If you just want one calendar for a couple people, it might be overkill. <plug> You may want to try my PHP Calendar instead. </plug> That said, if I had it to do over, I would still choose WebEvent over other options because it's fairly inexpensive, it's very good at what it does, and it's better than writing such an extensive system myself. :)

I hope this document helps you to make a better informed decision.