AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar is a very light web application to show a picture and its legend per day before Christmas.
It’s written in PHP, use last web technologies, and proud to not support old versions of IE.

You are in a hurry?

OK, let's do it quickly!

git clone https://github.com/Devenet/AdventCalendar advent
cd advent/private
cp settings.example.json settings.json

Then edit the settings.json file to configure the application and set the year – or generate settings file and put it in the private folder.

To finish, just put your image files in the private folder; images named with the number of the day (such as 1.jpeg, 2.jpg, 3.png).
Supported formats are: JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF.

Installation

Get the source

Download the last version on the releases page!

Or clone the repository

If you have git on your server, you can also just clone the repository with:

git clone https://github.com/Devenet/AdventCalendar advent

Configuration

Basic configuration

Rename the settings.example.json file on folder private in settings.json and edit it to configure the application.

The minimum required configuration file must contains:

{
  "title": "my Advent Calendar",
  "year": 2017
}

Feel free to use the online settings file Generator to easily build your settings.json file, and then put it into the private folder.

Full available options

Property	Type	Description
`year`	integer	Required Set the year to be used for the calendar and the cutdown
`title`	string	Required Set the title of your AdventCalendar
`background`	string	Set to `alternate` to use an alternative background image
`passkey`	string	If filled out visitors need to enter a password to access the private AdventCalendar
`disqus_shortname`	string	Set a Disqus account to enable comments for days
`google_analytics`	object	Set a Google Analytics account with a child object containing the two properties `tracking_id` and `domain`
`piwik`	object	Set a Piwik account with a child object containing the two properties `piwik_url` and `site_id`
`disclaimer`	string	Set a custom disclaimer or copyright notice

This is an example with all options:

{
  "title": "my Advent Calendar",
  "year": 2017,
  "background": "alternate",
  "passkey": "mySecretPassword",
  "disqus_shortname": "myDisqusName",
  "google_analytics": {
    "tracking_id": "UC-12345",
    "domain": "domain.tld"
  },
  "piwik": {
    "piwik_url": "piwik.domain.tld",
    "site_id": "12345"
  },
  "disclaimer": "All content is under Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 licence."
}

Transform AdventCalendar into CountDownCalendar

If you want, you can also customize month, first day and last day which are used to display the period of days, but it's not really an AdventCalendar anymore ;-)

Just change the period with those 3 options:

{
  "month": 3,
  "first_day": 8,
  "last_day": 31
}

Picture per days

Add pictures

Put your photos in the private/ folder, and name them with the number of the day you want to illustrate. For example, for the 1st December, call your file 1.jpg or 1.jpeg.

Supported formats are: JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF.

Be sure that the access to private folder is forbidden when browsing it!
For Apache configuration, be sure that a .htaccess file with the directive deny from all is in and read.

Customize legend and title

To add a title, a legend or a text on a day page, just rename calendar.example.json in folder private in calendar.json and add what you want to display.

For example:

{
  "6": {
    "title": "Saint Nicholas Day",
    "legend": "Berlin, March 2013",
    "text": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, [...]."
  }
}

Feel free to use the online calendar file Generator to easily build your calendar.json file, and then put it into the private folder.

Oups, problems?

All days are shown before Christmas: Check the syntax in settings.json or update the year.
Photo is not displayed: Be sure your photo is correctly named, like 3.jpg or 12.jpeg with the supported formats.
Title, legend or text are not displayed: Check the syntax of your calendar.json file.
Day is shown in late or advance: Configure the timezone of your server.

Want to contribute?

Source code is hosted on Github by Nicolas Devenet. Feel free to fork it and to improve the application!

Let me know if you use Advent Calendar by sending me an email, I will be happy ;-)

TuulaP/AdventCalendar