I use the web calendar utility to show availability for my vacation home rental business. About every other time I navigate to one of the calendars all the dates are blocked out on every month as if there is no availability for years to come. My customers frequently complain about this and I have even added instructions to "please refresh your browser if all dates are blocked out" (which helps most of the time.)

Is there any way to fix this?

http://www.sweethomesrentals.com/Sand_C … ental.html

Anyone... hello.... anyone?

todd

I don't have an answer.
But, did you start a service ticket with customer service?
The customer service people are great and have never failed me.
rodgw

Todd,

There has been some luck with using meta tags to force a refresh. You can google meta refresh and find those codes.

Todd

I have exactly the same problem, with the same application (holiday rental, see http://www.thefindhornview.co.uk/availability.php)

Unless I can find a fix I'm going to have to swap software, it's a disaster if people see that a whole month is booked erroneously.

Anybody else found other calendar software that can do this without error?

Thanks

David

Hey thanks for the suggestions (David - the meta tag refresh is a great idea and I'll give it a try - thanks!)

I got this post from CC support and it seems to be working for now:


In some cases I have seen that the user must use the "Fix for Displaying Active Content" option that can be found under the customize tab for the Calendar. This screen shot will show you exactly where it can be found. Once you have selected the option for the Calendar you are using, you will need to re save your project, then re-upload it to your server.


Todd

I was listing comments from my customers on an old post but since Coffee cup removed the post, I'll start posting them here on my original "cry for help" post:

Good thing this person emailed because there were really only ten days reserved from now till the end of the year...

"Late last night I went to the calendar at the website and it showed cedar gardens rented from now through December. All the days were blocked out???"

And another...

"Kate,
Oh, I'm so glad. Late last night I went to the calendar at the website and it showed cedar gardens rented from now through December."

And another...

"First, your online calendar is showing ALL days booked through the remainder of the year even when I refresh my screen as it recommends."

Can they ALL be wrong? I don't think so...

Todd Korgan
www.sweethomesrentals.com

Todd,
They are not all wrong. I had to scroll back up to your earlier post to find the exact link to your calendar page. I see that all dates are booked in red. There can be several reasons for this and I do see some issues that maybe we can clear up to help your calendar to work better for you and your customers.

Your web page names. The address of your calendar should be kept simple, without spaces. Here is an example of your web page address, as it shows up in the address bar:

That is a crazy long URL for any web page. In addition, every time you see the %20, that is the web browser trying it's best to make up for blank spaces between words. "Oregon Coast Beach" is 3 words with 2 spaces. Web browsers and html don't like blank spaces, and this makes the browser work harder. Try to simplify the names, use underscores if you have to but not dashes - or special characters, like & * and stuff. Oregon_Coast is ok.

The next thing I see is something going funky with the .xml file. It keeps pointing over and over at your C\: drive on your computer as a location for the same file. Example code:

and goes on like this about 20 more times. I have no idea why this is even in your .xml file for the web calendar, but it's weird that it is doing that. Is it possible you used a sound or image that had not yet been saved on your computer? For sounds and background images, try saving them in the same folder as your website files on your computer before using them. The path should be simpler. Like I said, it's just weird to see files on the Internet pointing to someone's hard drive and that can really mess thins up big time.

As an experiment, if you have the time, try making another calendar using the newest version of web calendar...just a simple one with only a couple of reserved dates. If that works, add a sound or image, and then open the calendar.xml file in any text editor and see if the problem with repeated files pointing to your C drive is fixed. I know it's a lot of work, but your file seems (to me) to be corrupt and won't work right until the extras are removed, pointing to files on your server instead of your computer and the file names are simplified in a way that makes it easier for the browser to understand.

Please do post back and let us know if you tried any of these suggestions, and if they corrected the problem.

Cliff you are da'man!

Cliff,

Thank you VERY much for the info. I'm going to see if it works this week. (I'm sure it will!)

Thanks again!

Todd