[Plugin: The Events Calendar] how to integrate in a site

No offense, but this is the MOST difficult, MOST frustrating, MOST un-userfriendly plugin I’ve ever come across in my LIFE…and I’ve been creating websites since 1996!!! GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY I STILL can’t figure out how to do this.

It sounds like a great plugin. Can the creator just post the steps to make it easier to install and utilize this? I mean the COMPLETE steps, complete with examples?

Yes – I’ve seen the documentation; I’ve read everything above; I’ve looked at the FAQs; I know this is free; and beggars can’t be choosers…but this is SOOOOOO frustrating that I’d really like to make it work so it doesn’t beat me!!!!!

Thanks for letting me vent.

Beside all the confusing and restrictive instructions, one thing I don’t like is that this plugin uses the same post editor that is used for my blog posts. Which would have been fine if the event posts didn’t appear in the blog page of my website.
This plugin sounds great but there are just so many hassle to make it compatible with my theme.

@orlisgal i totally agree. i’ve read EVERYTHING and only from reading this topic can a piece together some info to get it working. The plugin looks like it could be quite good though.

The main issue I have is that when i go to the events/upcoming page all my sidebars disappear and the page gets messy! Is this because the plugin uses a different category display template?

As dcutri said:

The Calendar and Event List will be visible on the Events category pages: yoursite.com/events and yoursite.com/events/upcoming, respectively.

This is as long as you don’t already have another page using the /events URL as I did!

Also, it seems if you set the ‘default views for events’ to ‘list’ rather than ‘calendar’ then the /events url for your site displays the list.

Okay, now I’m confused. I had this working before. I had created a page that was set to use the “gridview.php” template. It had an odd quirk (a matter for another thread), but it worked. No redirects, etc.

I just installed Genesis, and it doesn’t work anymore. I can’t figure out where to put gridview.php so that it shows up as a template option, and the scheonline.org/events shows up as “page not found.”

What the heck happened to it?

Never mind; I just found it. It isn’t yoursite/events; it’s yoursite/category/events.

I’m with Orlisgal. I’ve been developing software since about 1998 so I’m particularly picky about usability, and if I can’t figure something out quickly, I give up and move on. That is what I’m ready to do now unless someone can point me to an easy step by step that actually works. I’ve seen their videos and I appreciate their effort, but they are too long and did not answer my questions or solve my problems. They were designed for the Pro version, so maybe that’s why screens they show aren’t the same and instructions they give don’t work. I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind buying it if I like it, but I need to know it works first.

So before I give up, has anyone written any step by step instructions? Please no videos as I like to see things at a glance. Is there a way to get this to work without having to edit code? Currently the only thing I see now is an event landing page that looks like a post. No time, no date, no venue, nothing but the description and no grid view. The free version does not have a url field if that’s what I need to see the grid as the developer speaks about in his video. I want to see the actual grid calendar. How do I do that?

Frustrated but not ready to give up just yet as it looks like it could be a nice plugin.

Katandmouse

To be clear, you are looking for the calendar view? There are a few ways to find it:

Approach 1: Add the calendar to your menu

1) Go to appearances > menu
2) Make sure you see the events panel, if not add it from screen options tab in the top right
3) check events just like in this screenshot https://cl.ly/B15v and add it to your menu
4) save your menu
5) now the default event view (calendar or list depending on your settings) should be in your menu

Approach 2: make a new event

1) In the events panel menu on the left, click add new
2) fill out the event and publish
3) click on view event button under the title to the right of the permalink
4) right under the event title on the front end of you site you should see a link that says “Back to Events” https://cl.ly/B2cF – click it
5) now the default event view (calendar or list depending on your settings) should be loaded

That is two different ways to find you event list.

I think in 2.0.1 I’ll add a link to the admin panel to help guide first time users to find their events.

Thanks Shane. This is helping. Approach 1 did not work but 2 did except for one problem. Take a look at the calendar page here and click on the event. https://174.120.139.90/~fencingm/fencing-classes

Note the items underneath the event listing that normally land in the sidebar widget and notice that they are now not using the stylesheet at all. Is it that it’s not compatible with the Rockettheme template that it’s doing that?

I should note that in the Rockettheme template I have the ability to assign widgets to a many different widget areas. I turned OFF all the ones in the sidebar for the grid view calendar and the individual events. Where the pages archives and category lists that you see under the event are coming from is beyond me. I’m guessing those are default widgets for WordPress and even though I do NOT have them turned on, the calendar is using them. And to make it worse, they aren’t where they should be, nor do they look pretty.

Any way around this problem?

you might want to try a few different page template options in the settings panel drop down. See if any of the other templates the theme you are using is better. The calendar simply places itself within the content within the default page template for your theme by default. You can change it easily in the event settings. You can watch Robs video on the settings if you need a walkthrough.

It looks like you are missing a couple divs or simply need to limit the width of the content for the single post. You can handle that by adding them in the pre / post html text areas in the event settings or with a tad bit of css. Again, this is a loose assumption because I haven’t looked at the code.

As you can imagine, working out of the box with the 100k+ themes out it in the world is pretty much impossible, especially as there are few clear standards and most themers don’t seem to follow the ones that do exist.

I’m glad to see that the plugin is working and you have gotten to the point of visual integration. This is the point in which we sign off support and wish you the best of luck. It is free after all. =)

Thanks, Shane. I understand the impossible task of working with all those templates out there. Appreciate your help.

Would be good to get this to work with Rockettheme though. Their templates are pretty amazing and full of incredible flexibility and power. Of course, it requires their cooperation as well. Thanks again.