advantages over webcalendar?

[besonen]

hi all,

i'm looking at deploying either plans or webcalendar ( http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php ).

for folks who've looked at both and chose plans, what made you decide to go with plans over webcalendar?

also, what does plans do (or do better) than webcalendar?

and what does webcalendar do (or do better) than plans?

thanks,
david

[ctolin]

[daltonlp]

WebCalendar is an excellent calendar, and for many folks, it's a preferable alternative to Plans

WebCalendar is private by default, but you can make the calendar public
WebCalendar has more fine-grained user + group management
WebCalendar supports more languages
WebCalendar has daily and weekly views
WebCalendar has custom event fields

Plans can use flat-files or mySQL. WebCalendar requires a database.
Plans is public-viewable by default. There is no way to make it private (except for external restrictions like http authentication)
Plans lays out events (especially multi-day events) better
Plans has event icons & colors
Plans has right-click menus for most things
Plans has the "upcoming events" plugin for easily showing upcoming events on other pages.
Plans has nice-looking themes


Overall, I'd say Plans has a slight edge in appearance & interface, and webCalendar has a slight edge in functionality.

It depends on what features are important to you. Some people can't live without a weekly view, so Plans doesn't work for them. Others really like the event icons that Plans has.

Good luck!

- Lloyd

[cknudsen]

Here's some feedback from the WebCalendar proj manager... me

I would have to give a nod to the Plans UI. It is very nice, especaily, the multi-day events representation. You cannot do this in WebCalendar right now (but we hope to change that in a future release).

WebCalendar does not use themes. Instead you can pick what color each element is supposed to be. And, you can add custom HTML before and after the calendar to frame it to look like the rest of your site. So, it might be a little more difficult to setup, but IMHO allows the user to match the calendar's look to the rest of the site.

As for requiring a database, WebCalendar can use SQLite... which is a standard part of PHP5. SQLite is an embedded database, so it's not a standalone DBMS in the traditional sense. So, if you're hosting services provides PHP5, you can use SQLite without asking your hosting provider to setup a new DB.

WebCalendar also allows users to subscribe to calendars via RSS or iCal.... not sure if Plans does this. And with WebCalendar 1.1 (in development now), you can actually add/edit events using your iCal client (Applie iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, etc.) rather than using the web interface.

[daltonlp]

Thanks for weighing in. I did not realize that SQLite was a file-based system. That's pretty slick.

You're right - Plans doesn't have RSS feeds. Plans' iCal import is pretty bare-bones too.

- Lloyd

[jhirshon]

iCal subscription support and RSS feeds would be REALLY NICE to have in Plans - any chance we could see this in the relatively near future?

cheers, J (Mac iCal addict) H

[daltonlp]

For iCal subscriptions, have you tried Plans' iCal import yet? I've had very little feedback or bug reports on that.

For RSS feeds, I'm not sure how exactly to organize that. Should events be listed in order of occurrence (within some time window), or in order of most recently added/updated?

- Lloyd