I'd like to create a calendar booking functionality for a website. The kind that you have when you book a place in a hotel. You open a calendar and choose the days you'd like to stay in. It shows you which ones are already booked, etc. then it'll take you to payment (which is a separate issue. I'm not asking about that). For a small website what would I need to start googling? Do I need a fully fledged database to keep track of the bookings? What kind of platforms would I need for this (for a small website), eg. firebase, or fully LAMP setup, specific js library? I understand the question is vague but I don't know where to start and which direction to go to. Thanks

Some booking systems are extremely complicated so you'll need to understand the full list of requirements. For example, it's not uncommon for them to deal with things like room types, group bookings, discounts, timezones, email notifications and third-party integrations like booking.com. On top of that some can also be used to book breakfast, choose checkout times etc. I would highly recommend researching a third-party system you can use instead of rolling your own, whether it's an app or plugin, especially if you're not 100% sure how something like this is built.

A lot depends on your website.

If you use a CMS there are plenty of extensions and plugins you can install.

If you just have a small static site or you are using a site builder then to do what you want is going to either be very expensive and complicated or not possible.

Can you post a link to your website. That way we can sell you if it's even possible.

I did say 'room' booking as I think it works the same way and when I did some googling I found more of those out there (I thought room booking would be less niche) but it's actually booking a place on a campsite, which should be simpler as there are much fewer variables, I guess. A friend of mine said he'd probably get me a client who has an existing website (I don't know the url, nor do I know anything about how the website was built) but wants to add an online booking system to their campsite website (as so far they've been doing the bookings over the phone but the person is retiring or something). I'd assume the site is probably old, small and simple. I'm just trying to research the topic before I speak to them.

I've seen quite a few ready made themes/plugins around campsite bookings. On the one hand, why reinvent the wheel, on the other hand, I do want to build my portfolio so would like to do as many things myself as possible (and learn alongside it).

Edited May 13, 20206 yr by portia79

There are plenty of ready made booking scripts around, here's a few:

https://www.phpjabbers.com/php-booking-scripts
https://www.iscripts.com/reservelogic/
https://www.inkthemes.com/market/hotel-booking-php-script/
https://easyappointments.org/
 

OK. Thank you