I have wanted to reward some of the users of TheVacationCalendar.com who have very generously referred their friends and family to the site. Going forward, I believe I have come up with a simple solution for anyone who refers a new member: Money.

Any time you recommend someone to use the site, give them your PayPal username. After the new member completes their free trial and becomes an official member, I will send $5.00 to you via PayPal.

How does this work? During the house creation process, there is a new field to capture the referral PayPal account. This account will receive $5 via PayPal after the new account remains open beyond the initial free trial period. Please note that the referral PayPal account cannot be the same as the account used to activate this house. Additionally, please note that standard PayPal service charges will be applied to the $5.

I hope that some of you will see the opportunity here. A short email to friends or a conversation piece at your next vacation spot happy hour could help you earn some extra spending money. There is no limit on the number of people you refer, however, if you happen to exceed the minimum reportable IRS amount, I will ask that you fill out a the appropriate form so that I can keep the IRS up to date.

We are pleased to announce that a new version of TheVacationCalendar.com has been released.... and it is packed with new features that we think you will LOVE!!

The first major enhancement is we have made the online calendar interactive so you can manage your vacations directly from the online calendar. Just click on the calendar day and an edit box appears which will allow you to add, edit and delete vacations.



We have also added color options to both the background and text so you can now color code your calendar. This should definitely liven things up a bit.



Next, we decided that since people are getting more use out of their vacation homes thanks to the online calendar system in The Vacation Calendar, we needed to provide a way to memorialize the great times you are having. So we added a new photo album. It is pretty simple for the first iteration, just add photos and comments. As always, the Administrator has the ability to remove any photos or comments that are inappropriate.



Since we were on a roll, we decided to pick up two more enhancements that were requested by the user community. Through the Administrator's manage account screen, anyone who wants to be notified when a vacation is added, updated or deleted can now get an email with the changes. Additionally, some users want to use the blog as a way to notify the group they share their vacation home with. Now, the initial add of a new blog can be automatically emailed to any one or list of email addresses. All of this functionality is easily maintained the Administrator's manage account screen under the Manage Website heading.



Lastly, to be able to provide better service, some hidden features were added to the website. We added auditing so we can track all of the changes that occur on the website so we can answer any questions that come up. Additionally, we added more logging so that The Vacation Calendar team can see what functionality everyone is using and what functionality is not getting used. This will help us focus our efforts on what is the most important to the user community.

Well, that is it (whew!) for now. Now get back to planning your next vacation!!

The Vacation Calendar Team

Middle of the day turnover

Question: Our vacation home turnover goes from 4pm Saturday to 4pm the following Saturday. How do I show that on The Vacation Calendar?

Answer: The Vacation Calendar is set up to show where people are "sleeping". This means that in your situation, you should book Saturday through Friday, which means the next group would book the following Saturday since they would be sleeping at the vacation home that night.

Website Cost

Question: How much does it cost to use your online calendar?

Answer: The subscription cost (through PayPal) is $20 per year. When you sign up yo get a free month to try out the website and see if it meets your needs. Cancelling is easy. Either do it through PayPal or through the Unsubscribe button found on the Administrator's manage account screen.

Why not use Google Calendar?

Question: How does your site compare to Google Calendar?

Answer: First of all, let me say I love the various Google tools. If you run a website Google Analytics is awesome. In my option, Google Calendar does fulfill some aspects of managing a vacation home, however, it is built for a broader set of applications and does not have the grainularity or vacation specific functionality that The Vacation Calendar offers.

The online calendar has much of the same functionality as Google Calendar, however, Google only has a limited set of user privledges. This means that if someone can schedule a vacation on Google Calendar, they can also change other people's vacations. This is the exact problem that The Vacation Calendar solves. The individual usernames ensures that you and only you can update a vacation that you scheduled.

Next, The Vacation Calendar is much, much more than just an online calendar. Our users RAVE about the house bulletin board. The blog seems to be getting more and more use and we are excited about the first iteration of the Photo Album. All of this is functionality that can only be found on The Vacation Calendar.

Lastly, The Vacation Calendar has a lot more potential. There is a long list of enhancements already in the pipeline ( Click here to see the enhancement list ) and hopefully more coming from our user community (hint, hint). As we build The Vacation Calendar together we hope it becomes an essential tool for all vacation homes.

Well -

We hope you are reading this as we are going to use this forum as our main method to pass on news and keep everyone up to date on TheVacationCalendar.com.

It has been an interesting start to this online calendar website. We launched in late October and were pleased to see a fair response. Unfortunately, we broke a Google search rule and ended up getting banished from the internet. We made countless changes to the site in an effort to undo our error, but it cost us about 3 months. We are now finally back on page one of Google for the search term "Vacation Calendar". Our SEO focus is now going to be to move up on the term "Online Calendar" which will prove to be an interesting challenge as we are currently not listed on the first 100 pages of Google for this term.

So, we are happy to be back. We hope to pick up where we left off. Thank you for those of you who helped TheVacationCalendar.com continue by referring your friends. We are looking into a way to reward you (and future referrers). Please keep an eye out for this under the category "Specials".

Now, stop reading this and get back to planning your next vacation.

The Vacation Calendar Team

At this point there are no known bugs in the system, but if you find any, please feel free to email us with the Contact Us link or add a comment below. We will do our best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thanks!