Topic: LuxCal 5.3.5 - MySQL and SQLite - released 26 July 2026
In this new LuxCal version 5.3.5 you will find some handy new features. A number of technical issues have been addressed, which are not directly visible to the user, and a number of bugs have been solved. Furthermore the exporting of events in an .ics file, both by a cron job and via the administrator's Settings page has been thoroughly reviewed and improved.
This LuxCal version has been tested with PHP 8.4.
>>>> FOR THIS VERSION THE MINIMUM PHP VERSION REQUIRED IS 7 <<<<
And as usual some last minute issues have been found by John from Denmark, the best beta-tester of the universe, who always helps to make the LuxCal Web Calendar a better product. Thank you John!
Hereafter you will find a full summary of all changes since the previous LuxCal version 5.3.4.
New features / improvements
In the Event Add/Edit window three mini buttons Bold, Italic and Underline have been added in the top bar (next to the smiley), which can be used to easily add these style tags to a selected text in one of the text fields.
On the Text Editor page, when editing the info.txt text, three mini buttons Bold, Italic and Underline are displayed just above the edit form, which can be used to easily add style tags to a selected text.
The events were sorted on "event time and time added to the calendar". Because many calendar users use the title field for a person's name, the sorting has been changed to "event time and event title".
Normally events without a defined start time appear at the top of an event list, in case of multiple events on the same day. For events without start time it is now possible to move an event to the bottom of the list of events by adding an * (asterisk) at the start of the event title.
On the Settings page, section Events, for Event title layout, a new component #sc (short category) is available. When #sc is part of the specified event title layout, it will be replaced by the part of the event category name up to the first space character. This way it will for instance be possible to start the Event category name by a symbol (e.g. a complex UTF character), which will be added to the event title. This feature will only work if the multi-byte functions are enabled in the PHP installation on your server.
If on the Settings page, in the section Events, Specifying venues is "Venue list" or "Both"and the file venues.php with pre-defined venues is present, the filter Venues - with the pre-defined venues - is added to the Options Panel. This will allow the user to select events for a specified venue.
Technical issues
Code simplification. The content of the printNice function has been reduced to just window.print() and @media print styles have been added to the style sheet instead. Furthermore the noPrint class has been added to the user name and the full screen symbol in the top bar.
The @media print styles have moved to the end of the css file, so that they are not overruled by subsequent styles and the entire contents of scroll boxes are printed.
When positioning the Add/Edit Event window, now the left side of the current window is taken into account, so that - when multiple calendar windows are open - the Add/Edit Event window will be positioned within the window of the calendar concerned.
The layout of the Cleanup, Database, Search, Thumbnails and all import/export pages with an explanation on the right side of the screen has been redesigned to get a better fit across the screen.
In the Add/Edit event window specifying a venue from a list has been simplified. When on the admin's Settings page, section Events, Specifying venues is set to "Venue list", then the pre-defined venues from the list will appear in the drop-down list of the Venue field and when Specifying venues is set to "Both", the previously typed venues (history), followed by the pre-defined venue list will appear in the history drop-down list of the Venue field. In HTML this is called a datalist.
Bug fixes
The regular expression $rxEML did not find email addresses with a sub domain (i.e. John@Brown.co.uk). Regex updated.
The feature to export events in ICS format via a cronjob or via the admin's side menu has been reviewed thoroughly. The following problems have been solved in the iCal export software:
The UID could contain a space, if the event title contained a space in the first four characters,
Individual days deleted from repeating events were not reflected in the exported iCal files,
The iCal field LAST-MODIFIED was filled with the dummy date 99999999 when the event had not been modified.
For "all day" events the end date (DTEND) in the exported events was corrupted.
Events created with "No time" set, caused syntax errors for the DTSTART and DTEND properties.
VTIMEZONE component added. Note: The required STANDARD and/or DAYLIGHT property is still missing, because the values of these properties are not known by the calendar. This will cause an error when validating the exported iCal file.