How can I sync iCal to my website for clients to see?
How can I sync iCal to my website for clients to see? I had a web guy who did this once, it was great, I want to do it on my new website.
MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo), iOS 5.1.1
Unfortunately this is far from easy. It used to be possible with MobileMe, but the process requires a CalDAV server, which very few website hosting services are.
The first step is that you can't do this with an iCloud calendar: it has to be listed under 'On My Mac'. Control-click the calendar and choose 'Publish'. Set 'publish on' to 'A private server' (I'm looking at this on Snow Leopard, where the default is 'MobileMe', which obviously won't work - I don't know if Mountain Lion is different). What I see is this:
You will want to check 'Publish changes automatically'.
Unfortunately it now gets difficult. If you publish to an ordinary website hosting server, all you will get is a text file. MobileMe had the facility to take the published file and turn it into a structured web page. I'm afraid you may have a lot of difficulty in finding a server to do this - I did see a reference to one which claimed to be able to do this, but people were complaining that it didn't work and unfortunately I can't remember the name. iCal's instructions rather assume that you will be running your own server, which I would assume you don't want to get into - I wouldn't.
The easier alternative is to publish publicly from an iCloud calendar - please see http://help.apple.com/icloud/#mm6b1a9479 and expand 'Share a public calendar' - but recipients will need a CalDAV client to open it: iCal is of course one, and Google Calendars another (though I've seen complaints of it being flaky).