Webcalendar with Lightning and Webdav

My motivation for this how to is to leave the google calendar. This because I want to reduce the data which I spend to google.

Preconditions
Working webdav server
ics File of your google or whatever calendar

Install phpicalendar
First of all we install phpicalendar to view the calendars in the webbrowser.
The steps:
- Download
- Extract
- copy the phpicalendar directory into your webdav directory of the webserver
- The directory structure should look like this:

http://www.server.com/webdav/

http://www.server.com/webdav/calendar <= all phpicalendar stuff
http://www.server.com/webdav/calendar/calendars/ <= space for your calendars
- rename the configuration file to config.inc.php

Create a calendar in Lightning
Do a right click below the Calendar in Lightning and choose New Calendar
The new Calendar is on the Network
Next
Format iCalendar (ICS)
Location http://www.server.com/webdav/calendar/calendars/newcal.ics (for exampel)
Next
Name and Color … whatever you want
Next
Finish

Do a right click on the new created calendar and choose Publish Calendar. You need permission to write on your webdav server.
Publishing URL: same URL as above
Click on Publish
After a few seconds the new calendar is created on your server
Close the window

Now copy your backup ics into your calendars directory on the webdav server. Name the file exactly as the new created (for example newcal.ics). You can reload your calendar in lightning (left click on the calendar -> Reload Remote Calendars). The events from your backup ics should appear.

When you create a new event, this event should be automatically uploaded to your webdav server. May be, there are some problems with the permissions (in this case, check if the webserver has rights to write the calendar file).

Nice Features
If you want to read your calendars offline, there is a check box in the properties of each calendar. You can check this, but be aware, that this feature is still experimental.

When your tasks are attached to a calendar you have already uploaded, the tasks are visible in phpicalendar. Are your tasks in a own calendar, just do the steps above.

After this how to you can definitely say goodbye to the google calendar.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 5:39pm and is filed under computer, internet, linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.