I’m currently re-designing a website for a client. On their B&B room page I have existing code embedded to check availability. The client now wants to introduce a calendar when selecting Arrival and Departure dates.
Anyone have any ideas on how to do this? Or can give me a cost to achieve this?
Yep there are lots of ways to add this. The first thing to decide before using a ‘Calendar Embed/Widget’ is:
VIEW
Do you want a full monthly view, list view, weekly view?
The ability to have all view choices?
Ability to add events, dynamically from a back office admin?
EVENTS
Will events be clickable to view from, an screen overlay or pop-up lightbox, shows a new page, shows a new window over calendar that can close back to calendar?
MANAGEMENT
Do you want to have full control or use another company’s platform?
Are you okay with installing to your own server, and managing the back end yourself?
These are key functionality issues you’ll want to ask the software company you choose. (Make sure they tell you upfront it’s available) Ironically, monthly views are hard to come by. List views are the standard. They’re not as cool, and don’t look very current in styling, so it’s a sacrifice. As far as management goes, this is where you’ll choose to pay a monthly fee or DIY (price may feel is steep) But you’re not having to worry about updates and time managing code.
I’ve used both, and I had time, therefore options were about equal. If you want to set it and let a client add events and be done. Do not purchase a calendar product/script at all!!
FINAL
I have an exhaustive list compiled from a previous project. Review them all before commitment. For one, I actually purchased Tiva to manage on my own server, and paid monthly from Timely for another.
These are the final choices I researched and very good in comparison.
MY CALENDAR SCREENSHOT
Tiva was easiest to install and manage. Had a full month view with small css file, and overlay for events. It had the cleanest look you will find, without anything hard coded.
Just had a quick look at some of your suggestions. Not sure it’s what I need as I already have embedded code to link to a booking site the client has already signed into. I was hoping I could adapt the existing code to display the monthly calendar on the page?
Oh sure, that’s not a problem. I was just offering these options, because I’ve researched for specifically embedding with admin functionality. If they have one already, use it with a Div as wrapper, Div to embed code into. It’ll work if they have an account where you can generate the embed code.