The Omni Group Forums

The Omni Group Forums (http://forums.omnigroup.com/index.php)
-   Other WebDAV (http://forums.omnigroup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57)
-   -   Bluehost Calendar Syncing with GCal (w/o iCal) (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=19587)

spincrisis 2011-01-04 12:14 PM

Bluehost Calendar Syncing with GCal (w/o iCal)
 
Hi everyone,

I use Bluehost to sync my .ofocus folder and I've been playing around with the 'Publish Due reminders as a calendar' option. I'm not a fan of iCal, and I use GCal on a regular basis. If you've tried to do this you've probably noticed that 1) GCal can't (won't) authenticate with WebDAV and 2) There's no option in OmniFocus to put the .ics calendar file in an unsecured folder on the server, unless you also put the .ofocus folder in an unsecured folder as well. While the simple solution is just to give up security on your .ofocus file, with the help of the support ninjas, there's a method of moving the .ics from a secure folder to a public folder.

1) Set up sync as usual. My sync preferences look like this: https://www.mydomain.com:2078/OmniFocus

This will create a subdirectory in my home folder called 'OmniFocus', where OmniFocus.ofocus and OmniFocus-Reminders.ics will be stored.

2) Create a Cron job. This is a little trickier, but if you know Unix it'll be a snap. A Cron job is a nifty little daemon that sits in your webspace and performs commands at specific intervals. The Bluehost support page on Cron Jobs is a good resource.

To create a Cron job, go to your Bluehost cPanel, and scroll down all the way to the bottom. Under the Advanced heading choose 'Cron Jobs'. You'll see a form that looks like this:

[IMG]http://people.omnigroup.com/derekr/up/cPanel_X-20101217-091749.jpg[/IMG]

Ignore for the moment the command in the dialog box, it's the one Ninja Derek helped me out with, and I've modified it a bit.

I've set my interval to every hour, although for my usage, every 6 hours would probably work. All I really want is to see the due reminders when I get up in the morning on my calendar. Next, I use the cp command to create a copy of OmniFocus-Reminders.ics into a public directory. My command looks like this:

cp /home7/username/OmniFocus/OmniFocus-Reminders.ics /home7/username/public_html/DestinationFolder/OmniFocus-Reminders.ics -f

Some things to note: 1) /home7/username/ is my Bluehost home directory, you can find yours on the sidebar of your Bluehost cPanel under Stats. 2) The cp command wants the source first, and the destination second, as you can see. 3) The '-f' flag on the end of the cp command is a modifier that "forces" the copy to overwrite existing (old) files.

So tada! The .ics file is now in http://www.mydomain.com/DestinationFolder/ and you can subscribe to it as a read only file from GCal! Hooray!

Some other notes: for pseudo-security of your .ics file, name DestinationFolder something obscure. I chose a random string of numbers and digits for mine. By no means impenetrable, so be careful if you are publishing sensitive information!


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 03:07 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.