Widget Formatting

Thanks!

In the next release, event date/time formatting will mimic the blog format setting, available in about a week.

Eran

Is there a simple date to change date and time formats in the widget? e.g. June 4 instead of numeric? and PM/AM instead of the 16:00:00

In the next release, the event date/time formatting will be controlled by the blog format setting in the WordPress core functionality.

Thanks Eran, the new release totally rocks!!

Eran

First of all, I think your calendar has the potential of being by far the best calendar in wordpress. And I love the date formatting matching the rest of the wordpress settings.

However, this may be the case of 1 step forward 2 steps back.

I have encountered multiple errors after the upgrade, some of which I resolved/worked around.

1. Immediately after upgrade the settings page became non-accessible (saying admin did not have the privileges). None of the pages under calendar (categories, etc) were even visible. Also, your demo event was showing up on the front end but not on the back end of calendar (thus it could not be deleted). I uninstalled and re-installed plugin and that fixed problem. So I understand that this is not huge, but my fear would be, what if this were to happen when I go live and have dozens of events that I would loose.

2. I set required field to only be description, but no matter what text I typed in the event would not be added, as if it did not recognize that I had text in the description. When I entered text into title the field background color changed but never for the description. The workaround was to not require description, but then why even allow to make the field required

3. The next issue, which was not a problem before the upgrade and now is (and I have not found a work-around) is styling in widget. In previous version, the style of widget matched the rest of the site. Now If I choose any color but white I get an overwhelming color box around my upcoming events. And I had to go in to the css file to input the hex numbers to match my theme, since there was no hex input in the color picker (that is more of an enhancement request). I just wish that the style of the widget would match the theme and not stand out. Even if I go with a white box, I can not seem to control the fact that text is black and again, does not match the styles of the theme at all. I understand this may be difficult, but again, it was working great before the upgrade.

4. Sticking with the widget, there need to be optional abilities to a) remove the # in front of the Title. While I know that this is the number of upcoming events based on the time I selected in the widget, the visitor to the site has no clue and thinks that is ALL the events that are upcoming. b) there needs to be (possibly optional) link to see full calendar (e.g. more events) after the last event in a widget – therefor people can go and see what is beyond the window in the widget. c) add/customize/change the title of the widget (e.g. if I wanted to let my users know that these are events for the next week or 2 weeks, again, to avoid confusion).

5. Again with the widget, spacing is an issue. In many cases, especially on front pages, space is at a premium. There is absolutely no reason to take up 3 lines for the event. Date and time can be on the same line. The event title itself can once again match the theme style and definitely be a few sizes smaller.

6. This one is more of a wish list. On the calendar page itself, I would love to have (optional?) a drop down for months. Especially because we are dealing with a school where parents may need to check when spring break is, they would have to click 9 times on next to get to the month they need to. Here is an example of another plugin that does it https://www.ncapng.org/test1 (though they do not do other things as well as you do). Of course this is not as urgent and as important as other issues, but wanted to share an enhancement request.

You can see all I am talking about on my site (work in progress) https://www.ncapng.org/

Thank you for your time.

Hi seaus,

Thank you for the detailed feedback, let me see if I can address some of your concerns:

1. I’m still discovering the pitfalls of the WordPress plugin upgrade process – so if you can’t access the calendar settings page after upgrade deactivate and reactivate the plugin and try again. If it doesn’t work, please let me know.

2. The description field validation is a bug, which I will package in a patch release.

3. This was an enhancement intended to mimic the tile color on the calendar, if however, you want to revert to the unstyled appearance, all you need to do is change the following line on the widget-upcoming.php page:

FROM

// link to event
$out .= '<li class="fc-event round5 cat' . $event->category_id .
	'" onClick="$jq.eventDialog({\'id\':' . $event->id . '});">';

TO

// link to event
$out .= '<li class="fc-event round5" onClick="$jq.eventDialog({\'id\':' . $event->id . '});">';

Furthermore, if you don’t like the new rounding styling, you can remove the round5 class as well.

4. I agree, the meaning of upcoming events widget title is ambiguous. I’m going to add a line at the bottom of the widget that indicates the time period it represents.

5. The widget spacing accommodates the wide array of datetime formatting allowed, if you would like to customize the layout, edit the widget-upcoming.php page – remove the
from line 43 and 55 to remove the line breaks between the dates/time.

6. I will put this enhancement request in the queue, but I can’t make any promises it will be anytime soon.

Thanks,
Eran

Regarding item #2, if you’d like to correct this bug before release of the next patch, change the line in jquery.init_admin_calendar.js:

FROM

$jq('.required').parent().find('input').keyup(function(){
     checkRequired();
});

TO

$jq('.required').parent().find('input, textarea').keyup(function(){
     checkRequired();
});

Hope this helps,
Eran

Eran

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

When you have a minute and glanced at what I put together as a “modified” look on https://www.ncapng.org. I will implement the description field fix later today.

The upgrade things is an issue, I did deactivate and reactivate the plug in, but the only way all the controls came back was uninstall with delete and reinstall.

Thank you for considering the dropdown month/year enhancement.

Serge
(and a new follower on twitter @atomicdots)

Oh, one more thing

the category color thing is an issue in a way. Even when I went and custom coded the color for category 1, when I went to add category 2 the color changed. That seems weird.

Ideally when adding colors, hex would be a great option in addition to color picker.

Thanks again

Sorry for multiple posts

on the title, I think adding an extra line on the bottom may be a nuisance for some. Again, I go back to suggestion to simply allow people to add their own title. E.G. “Events for the next 2 weeks” or “Next Month” or whatever the user desires, thus being flexible and addressing ambiguity and doing what most widgets allow too.

Thanks

The upgrade things is an issue, I did deactivate and reactivate the plug in, but the only way all the controls came back was uninstall with delete and reinstall.

That’s odd, because others have indicated the restart was sufficient.
Needless to say I intend to resolve the next and future versions of the plugin with a smoother upgrade process.

The category color thing is an issue in a way. Even when I went and custom coded the color for category 1, when I went to add category 2 the color changed. That seems weird.

I’m not sure I understand how you’re changing the colors, but you don’t want to make modifications to the cat_colors.css file, since it’s a dynamic file. Every time you modify any category the cat_colors.css is completely re-written.

I forgot to mention that I already have the “hex field” on my todo feature list but I don’t have an ETA at this time.

Thanks again for your feedback.
Eran

ok, thanks for clarifying the hex issue.

Sorry for the confusion about category colors, but I guess in a way you explained it.

Since I wanted the calendar to match the site colors and I could not pick the matching color using picker I went in to the cat_colors.css and placed the hex code in myself. However, as you just explained, when we went back and added a second category the colors got reset.

Thanks again.

Btw

The description bug fix works well. So does stripping out the color/class

Seaus,

The next plugin release will include:
1. A widget title option (to replace the # upcoming events title)
2. A field to enter hex values on the category management page

I expect to release it sometime next week.

Eran

wonderful