Shortly after Joomla 3.7 was released, we are happy to announce DPCalendar 6.0. Our new cutting edge version of one of the best Joomla calendar and event manager comes with some amazing new features. We use the kickass new custom fields library, which is by the way donated by us to the Joomla community. Beside that we were revamping the whole template layer of DPCalendar to work with any major CSS frameworks like Bootstrap 2/3/4 or UiKit, as well as Font Awesome for icons. More on that later.
Additionally we are preparing slowly for Joomla 4, but this will be covered in another blog post. First we want to introduce our new major features of DPCalendar 6. Enjoy reading.
New template layer
Till now we have already out of the box support for Bootstrap 2 and 3, but we were still shipping a namespaced bootstrap 2 version which can be activated in DPCalendar when the template didn't fit into the bootstrap stack. We got rid of that and refactored the whole templating layer of DPCalendar to work natively with any major CSS frontend framework like Bootstrap 2/3/4 or UiKit. But that's not all, want to be ready for the future as well when old ones get deprecated and new ones arise or custom elements get implemented. Means our templating layer is made that way, adding a new CSS framework or icon set requires us minimal code changes and they will affect all views and layouts in DPCalendar. This step is needed as Joomla itself will not be backwards compatible across major versions when we do bootstrap major shifts. More on that problem can be read here.
Additionally we have been moving any part in DPCalendar which produces output to a layout. We went even so far that the forms for events, locations, bookings and tickets are rendered by the same layout on the front and back end.
New location views
There are two new views available. A locations view which shows all configured locations in DPCalendar and a location details view which shows the information about a location and the upcoming events. The event details pages does not link anymore to Google maps directly, instead of to the location details page. For every menu type additional parameters are available to define the initial latitude and longitude as well as the zoom factor.
Under the hood we refactored the code the way, that we can integrate more maps libraries like OpenStreetMap. But we open that door in a future release.
Updated libraries
- Calendar library
We have updated our Javascript calendar library. Beside some performance improvements, it comes with a new list view which has a fresh look and some nice little features. You can define business hours, working days and when there are too many events on a day, then a readmore button is shown.
The mini module has now the same calendar options as the menu item - CalDAV
We updated the CalDAV library to be able to integrate more features in the future like calendar sharing or scheduling. - Google attachments
The Google calendar API serves now attachments from Google Drive. The DPCalendar Google plugin integrates them nicely in the event details page. - Payment gateways
The payment libraries got a version shift. Like that we can talk now with paypal through their Rest API as well.
All Javascript and CSS files are now in the media folder and can be overriden in the template when desired.
Joomla custom fields
As DPCalendar was already working fine with DPFields, it supports now out of the box the Joomla custom fields. That's why DPCalendar 6 is only compatible with Joomla 3.7. If you want to have a look how all of that works, then we suggest to check out our demo site. We prepared a series of events for you where you can see how it works. On the back end you can also play around with the custom fields to get a feeling for it. Basically it works the same way as with the core, eg. articles or contacts.
We support custom fields for events, locations, bookings and tickets.
Small improvements and bug fixes
Beside the great new features, we fixed some bugs and added many little goodies to DPCalendar to make your life as administrator easier and to offer your visitors a neat event experience. The following list represents the full changelog of the new 6.0 version:
- [#3261] Event limit option
- [#3274] Map of locations as menu link
- [#3563] Location list menu item
- [#4071] Business hours
- [#4272] Support multiple frontend frameworks
- [#4422] Attachments - Google Calendar
- [#4462] Mini module should have the options like the component
- [#4090] Move calendarlist JLayout to view layout
- [#4126] Upcoming: Modern calendar icons
- [#4170] Events from subcalendar are fetched in parent calendar via CalDAV
- [#4178] Add option to hide only capacity used
- [#4181] Show prices inline in edit form
- [#4187] iCal name is not human readable
- [#4199] Save and copy on front end
- [#4208] Email notification subject not according to content
- [#4214] Calendar view, define which views to show
- [#4244] Option to disable default to list view on small screens
- [#4255] Using Joomla lib to render tabs
- [#4263] Optimize CalDAV client sync
- [#4308] New location from frontend with gps cords.
- [#4451] Clicking from the mini calendar defaults to "Day" view
- [#4465] Ability to set a default calendar category when adding
- [#4500] Show current time as line
- [#4537] Caldav acl privileges - Edit own + delete not possible
- [#4556] Event details page, consider the address setting
- [#4583] Use the same layout on the front and the back end
- [#4628] Joomla custom fields integration
- [#4644] Remove duplicate dpcalendar string from plugin names
- [#4670] Remove DPFields support in favor of Joomla custom fields
- [#4569] Lat/long input not validated in backend
- [#4635] Booking Details created time incorrect
How to upgrade?
We tested this version extensively, but we expect some bugs in the next weeks as we have rewritten every single line in the template and layout files (there are over 1'000 files touched). So please make a backup before you do the upgrade! The template overrides will not work anymore, so please remove them from your templates HTML folder. After these steps are done, you can install your downloaded DPCalendar 6 package through the extension manager or update it through the extension update functionality.
The 5.x series changes now to maintenance mode. This means, when critical bugs appear or security issues do arise, then we will make patch releases for the 5.x series. No new features will be released, our full focus goes to version 6.
This release took us longer than expected, but it was worth the effort and time we put into this version. You as valuable user of DPCalendar will have a great new calendar and event experience for Joomla for many years!
Kind regards
Allon Moritz aka laoneo
Founder of Digital Peak