Better-than-average event organizer

Hey @jolshefsky,

Geoff from Modern Tribe here. I know it’s been a few days since you posted this review, but I wanted to follow-up with you directly.

First off, thanks a ton for your feedback! The fact that you gave us 3-stars in light of the shortcomings you encountered is dang kind and shows that you carefully weighed your review.I appreciate that.

I’m definitely concerned to see any review that notes “substantial compromises” in the plugin. You raise some points here and I want to make sure we address those.

If you have a category with no future events, for instance, the default behavior is to claim there are “no events”, even though there is a “previous page” button which takes you to the now-past events.

I get what you’re saying, but am not sure I totally agree. The list view is an archive of Upcoming Events by nature (indicated in the archive’s title tag) so a notice that there are no events for a category without any upcoming events seems to be correct behavior. In fact switching to month view is a good example of the difference between upcoming events and an archive of all events.

That said, that doesn’t mean we can’t be doing this better. For example, what if the messaging was changed from “There are no events” to something clearer like “There are no upcoming events, but see past events” if there are past events recognized? That might be one solution.

On that same note, there is a way to hook into these notices and customize the messaging as needed. Here’s an example of how that could work.

It also supports importing events from CSV files so if you have a lot to import on a regular basis, that feature is very handy and unique. Unfortunately, it’s implemented terribly. You must manually select each field for the imported file nearly every time you pick a file (as best I can tell, it forgets when you restart the browser).

We’ve been putting a lot of work into the CSV importer over the past couple of releases, namely being able to import more information. I would totally agree that having to map-map the fields to the import each time would be a pain, but it does indeed remember your last import preferences. If this isn’t the case for you, I’d suggest checking your browser cache settings to make sure the browser is not inadvertently dropping that information for you.

It’s neat that the plugin supports exporting to iCal format for single or multiple events (and to Google for single events) but the location of the event doesn’t include the name of the venue.

That’s a solid recommendation! iCal only provides s single text field for exporting a location into the iCal markup for importing events, but it might be possible to prepend the venue name inside that field. I’ve flagged this to look into it further!

Every time The Events Calendar is updated, I worry that something is going to break

Oh no, that’s not good! Hopefully we didn’t cause that impression for you on past updates but, if so, then I’m truly sorry.

If you’re spinning customizations to the plugin’s layout, we do recommend using a template override when doing so. Please do check out our Themer’s Guide for this because this approach allows you to customize the plugin to suit your needs while saving those customizations in your theme (or child theme) directory to prevent them from being overwritten when there is a plugin update. We know that modifying core plugin code is not an ideal way to go, which is why we’ve made this possible.

Similarly, we have documented all the functions available in the plugin so you are able to hook into any of them and either roll them into your theme’s functions.php file or as a standalone plugin. Definitely do check this out as a reference as well before looking to core code–this too, will prevent losing any work you’ve put into customizations!

Finally, we do our best to communicate changes to the plugin before and after they are released. Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our blog and you’ll receive a preview of high-level changes well in advance and the actual release notes once the updates have been shipped. Also, if you’re really interested in testing an update before it’s released the plugin is completely open-sourced on GitHub and you are totally welcome to download the branch of an upcoming release and test it out on a development site in advance to see if it will have any adverse (or positive) impact on your site.

Thanks again for your feedback and review! Naturally, I’d be more stoked to see a full 5-stars but sharing your thoughts like this only helps us make things better and–if possible–ear more stars from you moving forward, if we can. ??

Cheers!
Geoff

Thanks for your response, Geoff.

I added tribe-events/list/content.php to my theme and changed the first few lines to redirect to the “past” view if there were no posts. It feels pretty hackish and I’m not confident in its robustness, but for my site, I think it will mostly work:

if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) {
	die( '-1' );
}

if ( !have_posts() && ( 0 == substr_count($url, 'tribe_event_display=past') ) ) {
	header('Location: ' . $url . '?tribe_event_display=past');
	die(); }
?>

As for the import settings, it does seem to be sticky for a while. I’m not sure why it forgets. I update weekly and sometimes quit and restart Firefox several times between updates. Sometimes it is fine after a week. Sometimes it forgets after one import. Not sure how to diagnose the problem.

My workaround is an AppleScript that tabs through the fields and types the text of each subsequent field in my import (e.g. it switches to Firefox and uses System Events’ “key code” and “keystroke” events to simulate typing “Event Name<tab>Event Description<tab>” …) The hangup is that “Event Show Map Link” comes before “Event Show Map” so “Event Show Map” picks “Event Show Map Link” instead … I have a hack that hits an extra “down-arrow” keycode on that one.

For what it’s worth, the reason I import so much is because I’m using an external database to add the events. My blog’s event calendar is things to do in my hometown of Rochester, NY. I’ll often be adding events that happen on odd schedules (Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. for 6 occurrences) or ones with odd durations (a series of short films staring at 8 p.m. that run for (12+15+26+8) minutes). Plus I am quoting websites and linking to the source, so I have scripts that insert that text automatically. These things are fairly easy to code between FileMaker Pro and AppleScript, but drudgery using the WordPress post editor. It’s not something that would necessarily be useful to anyone else, either—nor would it be easy to add all the permutations that people require.

As a side note, I forgot another qualm: events are considered “unique” by title. So if I have an event named “Open Mic Night”, if I import a different event with the event name “Open Mic Night”, it replaces the original. Properly, that action should be disabled (or, at best, an option), and an additional import field of “Event Post ID” would allow a way to uniquely identify events.

I do appreciate the Themer’s Guide but that is another worry about updating …

Updating has always been a scary thing for me. Some developers are committed to their user base and would consider it a sin to break backwards compatibility. Others are not so considerate, and this is a common trend in recent years. I think the first sting was when I learned that if I follow Apple’s advice and update iTunes, it breaks access to older versions of iTunes that can’t be updated (since my old PowerBook is my stereo’s iPod). This happens constantly on my Android device where an update will literally break the basic functionality of the application (I’m looking at you, Missing Sync!)

So when it comes to everything these days, I worry that clicking “Update” may mean all my work gets corrupted, or limited in access, or functionality changes to my dislike. And by customizing the plugin through the Themer’s Guide suggestions, it’s clear that if, say, list/content.php gets updated in version 3.13.1, using my theme’s version that is “frozen” at version 3.12.2 would break things in unexpected ways.

In any case, while The Event Calendar isn’t perfect, it’s still better than anything else.