NOTICE:
This blog post is outdated and no longer contains factual data. Google and Thunderbird have updated their software since this post was written.

TIP:
Look at the Thunderbird Add-On called “Provider for Google Calendar”. It takes care of all this crap for you.

Before we get started, if you have a personal calendar, Google has a quick how-to here. The Google tutorial only covers basic calendars.  This tutorial will cover both personal and shared calendars.

Google Calendar is neat and pretty much every phone and app has some sync system that works with it… except Thunderbird with the Lightning Add-on.  Actually it does, it’s just not intuitive.

NOTE: If you use the Sunbird stand-alone calendar client, the steps are essentially the same, but some menu options may be different.

What you need:

Thunderbird (2.x works, but >= 3.01 is better)

Lightning Add-on (.9x for Thunderbird 2.x, >=1.0b1 for TB 3.0.x)

A Google Calendar or access to a shared Google Calendar.

What to do:

1. Add the Lightning Add-on to Thunderbird and fire it up.
2. In the left column your calendars are listed.  Below them right-click and click New Calendar
3. Select On the Network, click Next
4. Select CalDAV
5. Put in your calendar URL
   The URL of your calendar takes this form:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[Google Calendar ID]/events

   In the case of  a personal calendar, the ID is simply your gmail.com address such as this:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/BigTurnip@gmail.com/events

   In the case of a shared calendar the ID is fugly, like this:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/utqisjt6b9hoot6i9o2jk1k9qg%40group.calendar.google.com/events

   To get that string, log in to your Google calendar and go to the calendar settings.  Down by the XML, iCAL and HTML links there is something like this:
   (Calendar ID: SomeBigNastyStringOfJunk@group.calendar.google.com)

   That’s your prize!

6. Click Next
7. Give your calendar and name, color and an email address.  Click Next.
8. Click Finish.
9. If it doesn’t seem to work, close and open Thunderbird.  There is a bug that may cause new network calendars to fail to display right away.  If it still fails, check the URL from step 5.

Happy calendaring.

Did you find this post useful or have questions or comments? Please let me know!

The post Integrate Shared Google Calendars With Thunderbird first appeared on Brain Goo.

What you need:

• iCal client like Sunbird or Lightning from Mozilla
• Apache web server with WebDav installed

How to do it:

1. Install WebDav and password protect a public directory on your web server.
2. Touch a .ics file for your calendar. I called mine matt.ics
3. chmod the directory so the web user can create files and modify the .ics file
4. Install and configure an iCal client that can publish via WebDav. Sunbird is excellent for this.
5. Remove your local calendar from Sunbird
6. Add a calendar to Sunbird using the URL to your empty .ics file
7. Add an event to your calendar. Sunbird should modify the .ics file on your web server. You will probably be prompted for the username and password on the first try.
8. Add that calendar to as many clients as you want. They can all share the calendar. Create more calendars! Party!

The post Poor man’s calendar server with iCal and Mozilla first appeared on Brain Goo.