Event Calendars

Event calendars are an extremely useful way for businesses/organizations/whatever to put out the word on upcoming functions, milestones, whatever the need. In my opinion, they are pretty much a must and should be included in a majority of the business web sites on the internet. Presently I'm working with the Content Management System (CMS) Joomla and so we'll look at a few calendars systems available for Jooomla. Picking one over the other was kinda tough but if I had to choose one, it would be GCalendar. I'll explain my decision at the end of this blog but first lets look at three calendar systems I found.

JEvents 

JEvents was the first event calendar to pop in my goggle search and I must say I found it to be a powerful and feature  reach calendar system. Their website is user friendly and full of demo's. One of the big items I was looking for was aesthetics, that being a calendar system that was pleasing to the eye and would look like it was part of Joomla. Some common features I found in all the calendar systems I evaluated were: event manager, multi-calendar support, multi-themes, and search engine to name a few.  Rather me trying to tell you about all the features of JEvents, I recommend you visit  JEvents website. The latest version of the software available for free  download is 1.5.3 unless your a member of the JEvents Club and  its 1.5.4. There are various levels of memberships based on fees paid that of course provide various levels of additional features. The only negative thing I found was the installation to be a little confusing. My recommendation would to be to improve the the installation instructions.

GCalendar

GCalendar is was an appealing option particularly if your already using Google calendar. Obviously this could make your life easier if you don't want to start from scratch entering in events and your happy with Google calendar (if isn't broken, don't fix it).  It has all the features mentioned above and more. The astethics are also very pleasing and it fits in well with that Joomla look. I didn't mention this earlier but all the calendar systems evaluated  have the ability to be viewed in month , week or day.  Google also has great tutorials for using their calendar. I did not find GCalendars website to very user friendly but other than that, no complaints. The installation was pretty straight forward.

JCalPro

JCalPro was another outstanding calendar system with probably more features than most need.  I could not find any free editions of JCalPro to down load so I'm do not know how easy or hard it is to install. In order to get a copy of JCal Pro, you must have a subscription with fee's ranging from $29 to $250 based on what what "bells and whistles" you desire. Some of the bells and whistles being RSVP, sh404SEF - SEO and security for Joomla, and Advanced Search. If money were not and issue or you needed a more advanced calendar system, JCalPro would be the system.


All three of these Joomla calendar systems are outstanding but based on simplicity, features, cost, familiarity, I would choose GCalendar.  However for free calendar systems its very close between JEvents and GCalendar.  I will probably use both calendar systems more and possibly revisit that choice down the road.  JCalPro is diffinitely the most powerful of the three but unless the extras are needed, GCalendar is my choice.