I developed this event calendar plugin because I wanted a performance calendar to use right here on my own website. In the process I tried to create something that was flexible and easy to use and would work for more than just musicians.
I’ve added a few features since it started…
- beginning and end dates to create multiple-day events
- a “duplicate” function to make it easier if you have a repeating event that you don’t want to re-enter over and over
- a fully functioning WYSIWYG editor for the event details, so you can include stylized text, images and other media right in your calendar – the way WordPress intended
- an RSS feed
- a widget to display a few upcoming events in the sidebar
- ability to display only a specific event, a specific date or a range of dates
…but as a general rule I’ve tried to keep this as simple as possible. I hope anyone who needs to display a list of events on their WordPress site would find this a useful option.
How It Works
Easy as pie! You just install it as you would any other WordPress plugin. This creates a new table in your WordPress database to store the events, and you’ll see the “Event Calendar” menu item in WordPress admin area.
Once it’s installed you can easily add, edit or delete events through the plugin’s Event Calendar editor page. To display the event in any Page or Post on your site you just include the MF Gig Calendar shortcode in the spot where you want the calendar to appear.
Type this shortcode into any Post or Page:
[mfgigcal]
There are some optional variables you can add to this shortcode to display specific events, specific dates, or even a range of dates. Feature an event, create your own monthly or annual archives, feature a tour… Be creative.
I’ve also included a widget that you can use to display a few upcoming events in your sidebar. You can control the number of events to display and the displayed widget title, and you can have the widget link to a page on your site that contains the complete event calendar.
You can find an example of the MF Gig Calendar in use right here on my website.
Get the Plugin…
Just head on over to the WordPress repository where you can download or auto-install it. Setup is a snap. Get it here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mf-gig-calendar/
I look forward to your comments and feedback, and hope we’ll see each other at an event!
Matthew
Note: If you’re a musician and you want really fancy – ticketing info, mapping, tour grouping, etc – you should check out “Gigs Calendar” by Dan Coulter over at blogsforbands.com. He has a great plugin that I’ve also used quite a few times on other websites that has all kinds of cool features specific to musicians and fans. Really, it’s great.
If you installed my plugin before July 15th, 2012 and you’re having trouble getting started, please upgrade to version 0.9.2 (released on July 15th) – I made a stupid little mistake in the original release that was causing problems with a completely blank event calendar. Sorry for missing this when I first published…
Hi Matthew, I like the Gig calendar you created.
If I could work with multi language (qtranslate), that would be fantastic!
Thanks from Spain
Ivan – I’ll look into qtranslate. That’s a very good suggestion.
Hi Matthew,
I installed your plugin for a friend and think it is a nice solution for musicians. However, on her site the DATE and DETAILS sections appear on separate “rows” — not horizontally aligned, as on your site. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Doug – some themes were making h3 elements clear any floats. This is what is causing your problem. I’ve added the following to the stylesheet in the newest update (0.9.4) to override that clear:left; command in your theme for the calendar display. I hope that fixes your problem.
#cal .info_block h3 {
clear:none;
}
Thanks for the plugin. It’s quite useful. Though there are still some issues with the plugin :)
I’ve got the same issue mentioned by Doug. The problem is resolved by adding the following to your stylesheet:
#cal .info_block {
position: absolute;
}
Another issue is that comments can only be turned on or off for the page or post which hosts the events. The result is that there are no individual comments listings for individual events.
Also, I’m using the Disqus plugin for comments, which somehow results in comments on events disappearing down a black hole.
Furthermore, using the Yoast breadcrumbs plugin, individual events don’t get their own addition to the breadcrumbs.
Hey guys. I’ll look into the weird layout thing. I’m actually seeing it now in the 2011 built-in theme too. Strange that it wasn’t there before when I was testing it out. Ghost in the machine – or maybe what I thought was an unrelated change caused a problem. Sorry. I’ll have an update tomorrow I hope. Always something to fix.
Babak – thanks for the suggestions! In response…
I specifically decided to build this plugin to not function as a series of posts. Allowing comments after each event as you’re asking about is basically the function of your built-in WordPress post categories. You’re basically asking for each event to exist as a WordPress post and that’s not really what I had in mind when I started this project. I know “Gigs Calendar” by Dan Coulter would give you that functionality if you really need it. You might check that out.
The breadcrumbs idea is interesting but I’m not sure it will be in the plan either. The plugin is designed to simply show the event list or individual events on one page or post. You’re never actually leaving the page to change views so there isn’t anything new to inject into the breadcrumbs. It just loads the same page with different event calendar information filled in.
My goal was specifically for this to be a simple list of events that you could display on a particular page or post – offering multiple views (upcoming, archives, individual events) without leaving that page/post. It was a simple structure I was looking for on my own site and wasn’t finding in the existing plugins I tried.
Thanks again for checking it out – and for the helpful feedback! Look for a layout fix tomorrow…
Thanks Matt,
I just installed and works great!
Best
Jon
NYC
Cool! Thanks for letting me know…
Hi. Love the plugin. My question is order of events. I am working on a church website, so have mulitple events in one day and my 4pm is listed before my 10am. How do I correct this? thx!
Hey Cheryl.
Glad you like the plugin! Thanks for the note. I address this in the FAQ page for the plugin. Right now I don’t have the events sorting by time of day. I wanted you to be able to put whatever you want in that field and not restrict you to a time – 3pm, 15:00, afternoon, all-day, or nothing at all! – so sorting by this field was pretty useless.
I’ll likely add a way to sort same-day events in a future update if I can figure out a good way to make it easy to use, but for now the same day events come out based on the order they were entered (on most web servers). So – for you the easy fix is to re-enter the 4pm event so it shows up after the earlier one like this:
1. Click the duplicate button in the event list next to your 4pm event.
2. The content should all be there – no typing necessary – just reset the date to be what you want and click save.
3. You should now have two 4pm events in your list – one before and one after your 10am event. Delete the old 4pm event that appears before the 10am event on your list.
Sorry it’s not more elegant at the moment. Hopefully in the near future…
Matthew
Hello Matthew, like to use your gig calander. Did everything but no complete interface while eadding new event. It’s stops loading after event location. Then nothing… Please help me.
Hey Stef
Sorry you’re having trouble. What version of WP are you running? Can you email me a screenshot so I have a better idea of what you’re describing? Thanks!
Hey there, finally a plugin that’s easy and powerfull to use. But I got some questions.
1. I want the Days and month in Swedish, I can’t find where to change that… SUN = SÖN SAT = LÖRD etc.
And where do I translate “Upcoming | Archive:” to swedish?
//Frank
Hi Frank – Thanks for your comments. Happy to hear the plugin is working out for you. For the moment the day names come directly from your server’s PHP settings, but I’m planning that the next release of MF Gig Calendar will include some international localization. Please hang in there for a bit longer. Maybe I can get your help with a Swedish translation when the time comes…
Love the plugin mate! but cant u make de titles the main thing, and when u click on them all the info expands (or drops down) because now i got a shit load of events, and its not really overseable..(hope thats a word) sorry!
Hey Justin – You get that effect pretty easily with jQuery. Check out the toggle() function specifically (http://api.jquery.com/toggle). Glad to hear you’ve got such a long list of events!
Like your plugin. The widget is great also, but i´d like the artists/events title in the widget to be a link that leads to his/hers/bands single event straight. Is it possible? What´s the php code for that?
Thanks in advance!
Henry – good idea. It doesn’t do it currently, but I’ll add it in an upcoming update. Thanks!
Thanks for a fab gig calendar – exactly what I was looking for. A great job done!
Thanks for this, Matt, almost exactly what I was looking for! I second what Henry said regarding a link on event titles on the widget directly to the individual page for that event. Keep up the good work!
Included in the next update which should be out this week. I’ll email you. Thanks.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the “perfect” plugin for gigs. I’d like to have a dedicated events page containing my client’s complete gig schedule, but I’d also like the homepage to display just the next 3 upcoming gigs. Is there a shortcode attribute which places a limit on the number of events displayed??
Hey Gene! Thanks. It doesn’t do that yet, but stay tuned. It will soon!
Hi Matthew, I really like the looks of this plugin but it’s not working on my site for some reason. The show dates are not displaying at all, and the other data is running together. I can’t figure out why. Thoughts?
http://ccravendesign.com/ccmusic/00-test-mf-cal/
Thanks!
Cyndi
Hi Cyndi – yup, you’re missing some stuff on that page! I took a quick peek and you’ve got some code in the stylesheet for your theme that is hiding the date from the page:
.hentry .date { display: none; }You could probably just add something like this to get the date to display in the calendar:
ul#cal .date { display: block; }Hope that helps.
Thanks, Michael, for the speedy reply!
And… that worked!
Cyndi
Great and simple plugin…is there a way to remove entries on the post page or should I just look for another plugin to do that…
Thanks again!!
Hi, I might be overlooking something, but is there a way to keep current day gig dates on the events listings? For example, today I had an event for 7pm (my general WP settings are for AKST if that matters) and it no longer shows – yet the event hasn’t happened yet.
Hmmm… Maybe I’ve got it using your web-server’s time-zone instead of your WordPress setting. I will double-check – and look for a fix in the next version.
Thank you, Matthew, I appreciate your time.
Hi Matthew!
Thank you for the plugin. It is great. Exactly what I was looking for.
However I am having a bit of a problem with it, and I am hoping you can help. Whenever I click on the events title for more information I get the following error:
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/53/10068353/html/wp-content/themes/theme_5661/front-page.php:1) in /home/content/53/10068353/html/wp-content/themes/theme_5661/header.php on line 15
Here is the link to my events page: http://dev.californiarhythms.com/#!/events/?preview=true&preview_id=398&preview_nonce=1a9c675398
Thank you.
It’s connected to the AJAX page loader you’re using. It uses the hash tag to keep track of pages. The way I have the link to the event seems to be going around your reloader script. What plugin are you using for that?
I am using a template which came with two plugins (WP-PageNavi and Contact Form 7), that I know of.
OK. Well, neither of those are AJAX reloader plugins – so it’s something that is hard-coded into your theme. Is it a custom theme that someone built for you?
Feel free to email me through my contact form and we can have the conversation that way. I’ll post the results here for everyone else to see…
Version 0.9.7 corrects the links to the individual events and should work for you. Good luck! Thanks for using the plugin.
Glad to have this plugin, really appreciate!! Thx
Thank you for this great plugin.
Is it possible to import last years events, e.g. per ical or rss?
Best regards
Not yet. Interesting idea! Thanks for the suggestion.
Hi,
Like your plug-in. Clean & simple. But it does not wrap to the window. Tried overiding the css div.info_block but no luck. Any ideas? Thanks friend. See what I mean at: http://www.honeytree.org/?page_id=167
I’m not sure if this is the problem you’re talking about, but you’ve got your shortcode wrapped in <pre> tags so the calendar isn’t displaying at all. That can happen when you paste formatted text directly into the WordPress editor.
I tried to use the “insert more tag” option in one of my events in this plugin. Everything still looks fine on the site but now my admin page has hidden all events after the one I did the “insert more tag” in, and the buttons for edit, duplicate, and delete on that event are gone as well. Any insight on what happened / how to fix it?
Hi Nina. Well I’ve been saying for a while that I need to filter the HTML that comes up in the Admin area. Guess I better get to it! In the mean time you can probably edit the event and remove the MORE tag by going to that event directly. It looks like it’s event_id=2 on your site, so (depending on your WP installation) you should be able to access it with something like this:
http://www.thejmubluestones.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=mf_gig_calendar&id=2&action=edit
I also need to work on making that “more tag” actually do something! :-P
Hi Matt, Great plugin…..if only i could get it working.
i am trying to use it in dreamweaver but cant get it working.
any ideas?
does the Site have to be WORDPRESS? i am trying to add it on the site http://www.tuxuk.com
appreciate any help.
This is specifically a plugin for WordPress and won’t work without that framework.
Hi, Matthew!
Just want to say, I love your plugin Event Calendar!!!! I’m just curious if there is any way to make a small change on the way it appears on my webpage, and I apologize in advance if this is a “stupid question” because I’m not very website savvy (this is all new to me). The bullet line is the date and time in small gray print. The event title is then shown in bold black print, which makes the date hard to see. I’d like the bullet line to be bold along with the event title. And then I’d like to see a blank line between each bullet just for visual space.
Thank you in advance for your assistance! :-)
Hi Deb. I assume you’re talking about the widget (in the sidebar). I purposely kept the specific styles I used to a minimum so you can control the look of the list with your theme’s stylesheet. In the admin area it’s under Appearance > Editor
I took a quick peek at your site and I’m guessing adding something like this would do the trick. Just stick it at the bottom of the stylesheet (style.css).
/* Add space between the events */
.widget_gigcalendarwidget ul li {
padding-bottom:10px;
}
/* Make the date bold */
.widget_gigcalendarwidget ul li .date {
font-weight:bold;
}
Thank you for getting back to me so quickly! I’m not sure what a stylesheet is, but I have a website developer friend who should be able to direct me on that. Thanks, again! And good luck with your gigging!!! :-)
It’s good to have a website developer friend!! Making the change is pretty simple – just log into WP and look in the menu under Appearance > Editor. It should open up the style.css file for your theme and you can make changes. Your friend will know what to do. Hope to hear you play one day soon.
Hi Matthew,
Very impressive plug-in and your a musician too, very cool. Could you tell me if it’s possible to reorder the date display in the widget. For example it currently reads: Wed 6 Feb at 5pm. I’m worried people may get confused. I would like Wed Feb 6 at 5pm. Basically just want to swap day number and month. I’m OK with going into the php file if needed.
Thanks!
Janet Atkinson
I’ve been intending to make the date match the format you choose for your blog settings but I haven’t done that yet. Always something to do! In the mean time yes, you can make a quick change in the php to change the date display.
Open up this file: mf_gig_calendar_widget.php
You need to change each of the appearances of this (there should be three of them): date_i18n(“D j M”
Just swap the j and the M so it says: date_i18n(“D M j”
Look for a fix in an upcoming update. Thanks for the comments!
Janet – this is fixed in version 0.9.8. You now have the ability to display the date however you want.
It worked like a charm! Thanks so much for your prompt response. Will send you a link to the website I’m working on so you can see your plug-in in action for a financial services co!
Best wishes for a happy, healthy 2013!
janet
Thanks Matthew I’ll be sure to check it out!
Hi Matthew,
Love the plugin. How can i get it to support utf-8 encoding in the title and description? I’m using hebrew characters and the titles and description of the events appear as question marks. Please help.
-Noah
That should be an easy fix. I’m posting an update this week and will include it.
Noah – just realized I missed this in the recent update. Will keep it on the to-do list. Sorry…
Just tweeted you. In a word, BRAVO! You get a hand from your audience and then lend one to your fellow musicians. A symbiotic halo is yours!
Just spent the morning working on your great plugin. I did a bit of debugging and I worked out a few and hopefully helpful fixes for you.
Where should I send the notes?
Again, well done. Your gig calendar is as beautiful as your riffs!
-Dave
(I’m an EE/web tech director and a friend to my local classical musicians.)
Thanks Dave! I just emailed you. Looking forward to your ideas. -Matthew
Hi, Matthew!
I love the plugin. My question is about Widget. How to display message “no events” there? Please help me.
Thanks
If I’m understanding your request correctly, you will find that in the settings for the Event Calendar.
Event Calendar > Settings
It’s the second option – where it says “Empty Calendar.” Check the box that says “Display the following message,” put your message “no events” in the text box and save your changes. That should do it.
Just reread and understand your question. By design the widget does not display at all when there are no events. I’ll look into adding the option to display an empty widget if you find it necessary. Thanks for the suggestion.
This is an option for you in the new version! 0.9.8
Hey Matthew, great plug-in! Definitely my favorite of all the ones I’ve seen. I just have one question (or wish): Is it possible to have the most recent event listed first, so people don’t have to scroll down to see what’s next? This would be amazing! Is it an easy fix on my end? Thanks for your help!!
Me too on this one
Hey Yvette. Are you talking about in the archives (past events)? Sorting backwards? The upcoming events list should already be showing you what’s next right at the top.
just checked. also in reverse order for me…
I.e. newest is at bottom of list. I woudl prefer it at top.
Of course my dates are in dd/mm/yyyy format. does that matter ?
(and I have other problem (next comment))
Mark – Thanks for sending the link to your site so I could have a peek. The events are displaying in the order I intended – sorting ascending by the Start Date. I’ll try to add an option to sort descending in the next update to give you (and others) the choice.
I have a problem where the widget version does not appear at all. I have tried ensuring dates are in future. NG. So my dedicated Events page works, the events show preperly in posts, but no sign of the widget.
Your’s looks great on your website. I look fwd to getting it working for me.
I use the following plugins – is there conflict ?
“options framework”, “Portfolio Post type”, “Gallery Carousel without jetpack”
Thanks for your comment & question. Are you able to change other things that appear in the sidebar? Maybe your sidebar isn’t registered correctly in your theme. I don’t know of any conflicts with the plugins you mentioned.
Nice plugin. I’m trying to use it with cart66 but I need to find out the name of the custom post type and change my function.php file so the cart application will insert the shortode. It’s a know cart66 issue with custom post types.
Thanks in advane
Great plugin! I love it!
What about a way to disable the Calendar Title? I use the page or post title as is so right now I have double titles, which doesn’t look nice.
Anyway cool plugin!
Also. When I fill in Event Location and Event Details, the boxes are set to “Text”. I’m afraid it might confuse my clients when they fill out the forms, so could be cool to be able to set them to “Visual” as standard.
Maybe there’s already a way. Thanks again!
It’s just a standard WP text area so it should default to whatever you used last.
Thanks for the suggestion. Next update: I’m including a CSS class in the title so you’ll be able to hide it easily.
I Love this plug-in! I can’t figure out why my calendar posts have this text (“NaNNaNNaNNaNNa”) right underneath the venue and right above the address for the venue. I have tried everything I know (which isn’t much). I’m sure it’s something boneheaded I’m doing or NOT doing. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! :-)
Hey Jimmy. Thanks for the compliment!
Here’s my best guess…
The NaN thing is coming from something in your theme. It’s a javascript error for “not a number.” I’m guessing you have some javascript feature as part of your theme that is trying to do something fancy with time information on your site. Maybe some sort of countdown plugin or something? I’m not seeing it on the mobile version of your theme.
Whatever it is, it’s trying to grab the content on your page – specifically what is wrapped in a span tag with a class of “time” – and turn it into something else.
MF Gig Calendar spits out html that looks something like this:
<span class=”time”>6pm-9pm</span>
The javascript feature in your theme is expecting what it finds in that span tag to be in a particular format and since it’s not the data it’s expecting it’s burping up the NaN (not a number) error.
Hope that helps you track it down.
Hi Matthew
Great Plugin, thanks a lot for it.
is it possible sort by month, date??? o mybe add a search option ?. When you have a lot s of events its very dificultd , find someone
You say that is possible customize the shortcode.
Can you explain how
Thanks a lots
Regards from spain
Sito, thanks for the note. You’ve got some good ideas, but they a bit more than I want to get into with this plugin at the moment. I’ll add it to the list for future updates. Shortcodes are explained on the “About” page in the plugin right in your WordPress installation. You bring up a good point though – I should add that to this website as well and link to it from here. I’ll do that very soon.
Thanks again for your note – M.
I really like this plugin, except that it seems that one line in mf_gig_calendar_feed.php conflicts with the excellent Yoast WordPress SEO and prevents it from generating XML Sitemaps.
Yoast says that this line:
'(.+).xml' => 'index.php?feed='. $wp_rewrite->preg_index(1)is a really bad idea.
Blog post about this
I’ve commented it out, but haven’t yet solved the problem.
Barry – thanks for the heads up about this. I saw your post on WP.org as well. I’ll address it in the next update if I can. In the mean time try resaving your permalinks after you comment out that line or after you disable my plugin. That might get it working for you.
Aha! that fixed it! Thanks!
Hello!
Thanks for the plugin :)
I just wanted to know whether it was possible to change the Event Title size and colour?
Cheers!
Hey Jill – you can control all of that from the stylesheet for your theme. The plugin spits out pretty plain HTML which you can style with basic CSS.
Hi Matt. Let me join all those who give you kudos for a great plugin. I noticed that version 0.9.8 allows you to change the date format, but I haven’t found where. Can you help me find that? Thanks.
Hi Mark – Specifically, you can control how the date displays in the widget (Admin -> Appearance -> Widgets). For changes to the date in Posts and Pages you’ll need to use CSS. Glad you like the plugin!
Hi Matt,
really useful and simple -your plugin is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for the excellent work!
One thing I couldn’t get to work was the RSS feed on events. When I click the link, it says the page doesn’t exist. I’ve renamed my ‘Events’ page to ‘Termine’ but typing that name instead of ‘events’ in the link doesn’t help either. Can you give me a clue?
I use WP 3.5.1 with a custom theme of my own (see ‘website’ above).
Best regards,
Daniel
Hi Daniel.
Thanks for the compliments! Yes, the RSS part is still a bit buggy. In particular I’m not getting the permalinks part of it working right – it conflicts with some other plugins and themes. You can access your RSS feed directly here for now: http://wp.alnus-eberswalde.de/feed/?events Hope to fix it in an upcoming update…
Liebe Grüsse aus NYC –
Matthew
Hi Matt,
thanks for the quick reply. It opens an RSS page now, but for posts, not events. Seems that the link directs us to wp-includes/feed-rss2.php which obviously cannot handle the ?events parameter. Same issue if I replace ‘events’ in your link with ‘termine’. I can see that there’s a file named ‘mf_gig_calendar_feed.php’ on the plugin directory. Should I perhaps copy this file somewhere or does it have to be registered with WP? Or would it help to change my permalinks settings? I choose ‘/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/’ for the moment.
Best,
Daniel
Hi Daniel
Now I’m seeing the RSS feed for the events when I go here: http://wp.alnus-eberswalde.de/feed/events/ Maybe you resaved your permalinks and it started working? Maybe you did something else? Not sure what, but I’m seeing your upcoming Baumstammtisch event listed.
Matthew
Hi Matt,
it works fine now. I tuned mf_gig_calendar_feed.php a bit, using strftime instead of get_date to get a locale-aware display of dates. Thanks again!
Daniel
Excellent!
Hi Matt,
I’ve used your plugin for quite a while now, always from my Admin account. Then I set up an Editor account and noticed that it didn’t show up there.
I installed the ‘Admin Menu Editor’ plugin because I wanted to change some menu captions anyway and noticed that your plugin requires ‘manage_options’ capabilities. I changed that to ‘edit_posts’, and now the main menu item appears (although not the submenus).
But when I click it I get a 404 error. The URL I give in the Admin Menu editor is as preset, ‘mf_gig_calendar’, which should redirect to your plugin’s overview page. It works fine when I’m logged in as admin but not with my normal user account.
Can you conceive of any explanation?
Kind regards, Daniel
I’ve been saying for a while that I’ve got a new update coming out that fixes that problem (and a number of others). Sorry for the delay. I’ll try to get that out today or tomorrow. Thanks for using the plugin! Glad it’s working for you.
Sorry, I’ve got to correct myself on one detail:
“…the main menu item appears (although not the submenus).”
When I’m logged in as Admin, all menus are where they should be. When I’m logged in as Editor, only the main menu item shows up.
Hi,
I’ve made my own translation (to Swedish) and uploaded both the mo- and the po-file to the language-folder on the server. How do I make MF Gig Calendar to choose the Swedish languagefiles?
That’s excellent! It should work. Make sure of a couple things.
1. You’re putting the files in the languages folder inside the plugin folder here: wp-content -> plugins -> mf-gig-calendar -> languages
2. Make sure the files are named correctly: mfgigcal-sv_SV.mo and mfgigcal-sv_SV.po
If your WordPress is set to Swedish it should load your translations. If you want to share the translation I’ll include it in an upcoming version of the plugin and give you credit.
Hi!
Thanks for helping! Correct file names should be mfgigcal-sv_SE.mo and mfgigcal-sv_SE.po. Now it works. I’ll email you the files. It would be an honor for me to be named as translator for the Swedish language version.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for making such a great plugin! Been enjoying it over the past few months. Quick question: Does it only archive up until one year?
Best,
David
It should archive all your past events and organize them by year. See my calendar page for an example: matthewfries.com/calendar
Simply elegant. Thanks so much.
Do you have a simple way to export event info?
Jon – there isn’t one built into the plugin specifically. You could use the RSS feed easily enough. Or you could use phpMyAdmin to export the database table (if you know how to use that tool).
Hi Matthew!
First of all, thank you for the plugin, it is great. I just finished creating a site for a band and that site is using the MF Gig Calendar. Everything else is working nicely, but for some reason I or the band members are not able to add any gigs. I can click the Create Event button and fill all the fields but after clicking Save Event the gig doesn’t show up anywhere.
I’m guessing it is some sort of database permission thing, but I’m running out of ideas. I can save the Gig Calendar settings, so it is writing something to the database. It’s just that for some reason the gigs are not added. Any ideas how to solve the issue?
The site is here, though it’s in finnish. I’m using the plugin on the front page and the gig calendar itself is in “Keikat” subpage. http://www.lipsaset.com
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Vladimir, Finland
Oh I forgot to mention that the calendar worked nicely on the temp url I used before transferring it to the current address. So perhaps there’s something in the plugin that got messed up in the process?
Sorry you’re having trouble. Are you able to look at your database with phpMyAdmin or a similar tool provided by your webhost? MFGigCalendar creates a new database table to store the events when you activate the plugin. Maybe that didn’t happen when you moved the site?
I love this plugin. Unfortunately, the widget output doesn’t get along well with my theme (H4 is way too big for sidebar usage). I saw in the in-code documentation that you’re planning to release a version that lets users edit the html output. Any ETA on that new version?
Justin – You can always change the way things look (font size, color, position) by adding to your theme’s stylesheet. To access an h4 element in the sidebar you’d just do something like this:
#widgets h4 {
font-size:16px;
color:#006600;
}
True. I was hoping to avoid mucking around in the CSS as much as possible given that any theme updates will break it, but I guess a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.
For the record, to get the output I have right now, which I like:
#mfgigcal-widget h4 {
font-size: 14px;
margin: 0;
padding-bottom: 0;
}
#mfgigcal-widget p {
margin: 0;
padding-top: 0;
}
That at least only alters your widget rather than potentially altering many if they were to use an h4, and it also gets rid of the excess space between the header and the link to the location.
I’m just mentioning this here in case someone else wants to make a similar alteration. :)
Excellent! Thanks for sharing that.
Version 0.9.9 was just released
Hey Matthew, First of all great Thanks for this Plugin! Actually i’m about to use it for a friend of me on his homepage. When i’m adding an event it will not be displayed on the calendar as it should be. if i have a look in the PHPmyAdmin i see it created an entry but without the start and enddate. If i add these dates manually it works and the events shown up in the event calendar. Is it a mistake made by me or is it a bug?;)
Thanks for your support!
Well. That is definitely not how it is supposed to work! I’m not sure what is going on. The dates are inserted using WordPress’ built-in jQuery calendar – it’s a process which is completely handled by your browser. Have you tried it in a different browser to see if it works?
Tried with Firefox 21, Chrome 27, Safari 6. In every Browser the same happened. Maybe you have more ideas?
Great plugin! Works great and easy to update.
One question – is it possible to have the archive page go in reverse order? (standard blog style). It’d be great to have my most recent past show show up on the top of the archive page. Right now it’s the oldest one first.
Hi Aram – I’m going to post an update tomorrow that fixes a small problem in the last update. I’ll include that option for you then. Stay tuned…
Aram – check out version 0.9.9.1 I just uploaded. You’ll be able to change the sort order in the archives. Have fun!
Perfect! Thanks Matthew!
Another question: How can I change the language to Dutch? I.e. which settings and files do I have to change for that?
The dates should use WordPress’ default settings. Just set WordPress to Dutch (nl_NL). I don’t have a Dutch translation for the rest of the plugin. If you want to contribute I’d love it. It’s easy to do (if you speak Dutch…).
I have the Mo and PO file translated into Dutch. What do I do now in order to have the plugin use these files?
All English parts are not included in the MO and PO files or maybe the fields are not used properly in the page Settings.
Instellingen van MF Gig Calendar
Eenvoudig gebruik
Een simpel werkende versie installeren is makkelijk: plaats deze verkorte code gewoon op elke Pagina of Post waar je de evenementenlijst wil zien:
[mfgigcal]
Enter some events and you’ll be up and running: (<>>
Aanmaken Evenement
Meer informatie over de werking vind je op de ‘Over’-pagina (About page): Over MF Gig Calendar
O, geef mij toch goed werkende Evenementen – Optionele Instellingen
Once you have events displaying on your site you can customize the default MF Gig Calendar with the following optional settings. <>
Kalendernaam
Welke kopregel wil je boven je je evenementenkalender als deze de aanstaande evenementen toont? Schaam je niet: wees creatief!
Archive Sort Order <>
How do you like want to sort your archive of past events?
Individual Events
By default the title of your event will link to a page displaying only that event. It is a handy way to share individual events. But hey! you may not like it. You can disable the link here.
Do not link my event titles to individual event pages
Aanstaande evenementen kalender leeg
Het gebeurt weleens. Soms is er niet veel aan de hand (of is er heel veel aan de hand en vergat je de kalender op je website te updaten). Wat wil je dat je evenementenkalender doet in het zeldzame geval dat er geen aanstaande evenementen getoond kunnen worden?
Toon het archief voor het huidige jaar. (standaard)
Toon het volgende bericht
URL van kalender
You can put your event calendar on any Page or Post on your site. Once you have it working you can let MF Gig Calendar know where it is by entering a URL of the Page or Post here. NOTE: MF Gig Calendar will use this URL in the RSS feed and in the widget. <>
Voorbeeld: http://jacquelinemeijersopraan.nl/events
RSS-feed
Wil je een RSS-feed link opnemen in je evenementenpagina?
Include full event details in your RSS feed?
What is your preferred format to use for dates in your RSS feed?
BTW Got the MO and PO working allright (forgot to upload…). In addition to my last reply concerning the missing parts of translation in the Settings:
Some sentences I DID translate but dont appear in the Settings page. Other sentences are 99 percent identical to sentences I translated.
Hey Matthew,
2013 is showing up in the upper right hand corner of my upcoming shows page:
http://davidoromaner.com/gigs
Is this normal behavior or a glitch?
Best,
David
http://davidoromaner.com
Looks normal to me. The default calendar puts navigation across the top creating an archive of past events sorted by year. Since you only have 2013 so far that’s all you see. If you don’t like it you can hide navigation and sort your events however you want using the advanced shortcode options. See the Documentation page in the plugin for more info. Hope that helps – thanks for checking it out.
I was actually referring to 2013 that’s appearing in my header all the way on the right hand side next to the up arrow scroll bar.
http://davidoromaner.com/gigs
Although, now I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the theme since I’ve previewed other themes and it’s not showing.
Also, I would like to format my gigs page same as your’s which is much nicer layout. Is that CSS available?
Thanks for your help!
David
http://davidoromaner.com
Yup. I took a closer look. It’s your theme. It’s in your stylesheet on line 92:
.year {position: absolute; top: 3px; right: 2px; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold;}
Basically it’s pulling the year out of the MF Gig Calendar display and moving it in the upper right hand corner. I think it’s intended as a way to display the year of your posts in the upper right hand corner. Not sure. You could just comment that line out in your stylesheet if you’re not using that feature.
Also – the style for the calendar comes almost 100% from your theme. The only thing the plugin controls is setting up the columns for the date and the content. The calendar is wrapped in id=”cal” so you can change particular elements in the calendar that way. For example – to remove the underline for the links in the titles (as I’ve done on my blog) you’d do something like this.
#cal h3 a {text-decoration:none;}
Hope that helps! -M
Great thanks for all the info! I’m going to work on it tonight
This plugin is SUPER…exactly what I needed. Had devised my own table which was most tedious. THANK YOU – it works exactly as you said it would. I love the clean simple look.
In my back end half of the dates have disappeared butt hey are all still visible on my web page front end? I tried uninstalling re installing, clearing cache, nothing? Help!! i need to edit info and add in new jobs for my team!
Hi Molena. I’m sorry you’re having trouble, but I have no idea what might be going on. Keep in mind archived (past) events and upcoming events don’t show up together. Maybe that’s what’s happening? Check your archive and see if you find them there. Good luck!
it is future events….what happened is I had about 6 events and I added in 4 new ones. When adding the last of the 4 i clicked save event and the event page displaying all of the events loaded but it now did not display any of the new events I had just created except for just one and it displays without the edit event option. As well some of the previous created events that are not archived ( coming in sept oct etc) also vanished. Again they are all viewable from front end.
Emailing you…
Matthew,
I love the ease of using this plugin but I am having trouble with the way it looks on my clients page: http://www.projectcompassioninc.com/calendar/
The dates don’t seem to be lining up in the areas that they should be.
Hi Mia – Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with the layout. That happens sometimes with some themes. I purposely kept the CSS controlling the calendar layout as basic as I could so it would blend in with themes better. In your case, your theme is trying to do some fancy stuff with the dates and causing conflicts. You’re going to need to get someone who knows a little CSS to help you clean that up. It’s just a few lines added to your stylesheet and you’ll be done.
Matthew, I do know CSS, if I had the lines to change that would be easy for me.
It’s just a matter of resetting the stuff your theme is trying to do. I haven’t tested on your site (obviously) but I’d imagine something like this would work. Just put it at the end of your theme’s stylesheet:
.cal .date {
background:none !important;
width:auto !important;
margin-right:0px !important;
}
.cal li.event {
list-style-image:none !important;
}
You’ll find your theme editor in admin area of WordPress: Appearance -> Editor -> style.css
Hey Matthew! What a weird thing to find the plugin I’m looking for made by a personal friend and colleague! This plugin kicks ass. Thank you!
Small world! Glad you like it. Now let’s play some music together sometime!
Hi Matthew,
Every time I use the duplicate button to duplicate an event I’m getting the following error message on the MF Gig calendar page that doesn’t seem to go away.
Warning: assert() [function.assert]: Assertion failed in /home/content/31/4379731/html/wp-content/plugins/mf-gig-calendar/mf_gig_calendar.php on line 1060
I’ve tried deactivate/activating the plugin but the errors still show up. Usually I duplicate an archived event. Do you know why those error message are appearing and if I can do anything to make them disappear? The duplicate feature is working, it’s just now my MF gig calendar page within my wordpress control panel is just bombarded with error messages. Thanks for your help!
David
http://davidoromaner.com
Hi Dave. This is strange for sure. That line cited in the error has nothing to do with the duplicate function, so I’m guessing that’s a coincidence.
Hi Matthew,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. I needed time to get more gigs that could meet the criteria of your questions. Anyway, to answer your questions, yes it’s only happening when I duplicate an event and it doesn’t happen when I create a new event. I’ve duplicated a few different events now and I still get the same error that shows up on top of the Upcoming | Archiving line in The MF Gig Clanedar page:
Warning: assert() [function.assert]: Assertion failed in /home/content/31/4379731/html/wp-content/plugins/mf-gig-calendar/mf_gig_calendar.php on line 1060
Anytime, I duplicate an event another warning appears on top of the previous one.Since I duplicated three events so far this year I now have three of those error codes listed. I can do a screen shot if you need.
Weird – but it’s really more of an annoyance at this point b/c the plug-in is working just fine and I would not be bothered at all if we leave it at that.
Best,
Dave
http://davidoromaner.com
Matthew, have been using plug-in faithfully for some time. I had to deactivate it to do troubleshooting on another plug-in and as soon as I re-activated it the widget does not display any dates, the link works to my calendar page and the dates are there just not in the widget?
Help!
Looks like you might have figured it out. I looked at your site and the widget is showing upcoming events. Whew!
Sorry Matthew, while waiting for a reply I installed another event manager so what you are seeing is not your plug-in.
I keep getting a “leave a comment” section below the “Back to the calendar” link on the single gig page. (http://www.smehubb.com/exeter-devon-250114-united-kingdom-startup/?preview=true&preview_id=86&preview_nonce=114f506b8f&post_format=standard)
I notice you are also getting a similar problem with HTML showing below this comments box.
Ideally I would like to remove the whole “leave a comment” section
Hi Matt. The comments display is controlled by your theme, not by MF Gig Calendar. You’ll need to edit your theme.
Updated to the latest version and can’t input dates other than current date.
Hoping this gets fixed soon.
Hey Mike – thanks for the heads up. I see you reported it on the WP Plugin site as well. I’m not able to duplicate this issue. I’m able to create past and future events with no problem in the installations I’ve got set up over here. Would love to help you. What browser and WP version are you using?
Looks like it is an IE 9 issue. I tried Firefox and it is working fine under FireFox.
For the record, this was an issue with the browser caching the old version of javascript file. Problem went away when the browser was restarted the next day.
I just downloaded and installed the plugin for my client. However, when I go to create an event, the date area is missing. It says Date (required) but there’s no input field next to it. So I can’t enter a date. This is on Firefox 25.0.1 on Mac OSX.9
I’m guessing this is a caching issue. The javascript file associated with the plugin changed how the date-select calendar displays. If Firefox is loading an old version of the javascript file from the cache you’ll have no calendar. Did you try emptying the browser cache and/or restarting Firefox? You can also try loading the current .js file directly and then refreshing that page. That link would look something like this: [your-domain]/wp-content/plugins/mf_gig_calendar/mf_gig_calendar_admin.js
Let me know if that helps.
Interesting. I cleared cache but no change. Then I went to the URL or the JS file and got a 404.
So it turns out when I downloaded as well as installed the MF Gig Calendar plugin. The folder is mf-gig-calendar and not mf_gig_calendar as Matt explained above. So I renamed the folder and now the file is there.
However, it didn’t change anything. The date area is still blank so I cannot enter dates/gigs.
My bad. Hyphens – not underscores…
Found the problem. It was a conflict with the All-In-One Event Calendar. Which is the calendar we were previously using before it became too resource intensive. I’m hoping MF’s won’t be like that. So I tuned that off and the date pickers show up fine.
Glad you found it. I don’t know All-In-One calendar, but might have to look into the conflict. Thanks for the heads up.
My calendar entries are going to the archive too soon. for example: If there is a calendar event for tonight from 9:30pm-12:30am the entry will go to archive before the event starts at 9:30pm.
Is this happening to anyone else?
Hi John. Sorry you’re having trouble. I’m using WordPress’s built-in method for calculating date/time. Before I start banging my head against this, could you confirm that you have your correct time-zone selected in WP Settings? Thanks. Hope we can get this sorted out for you.
ADMIN AREA -> Settings -> General
On that page look for Timezone and see what you have selected. Also confirm that you’re seeing the correct time displayed next to “Local time is…”
thanks. and sorry. it was the time zone setting.
Good news!
Is there a setting to choose WHEN your entry archives? My entries are archiving before the show starts. I am on EST time.
Hi Matthew and thank you for making this great and simple Plug-In!
I have one question: we need to put a table in the Event Details but there is no such a button in the editor.
Is there an easy way to add – maybe in the functions.php?
Thanks a lot!
Tomas
Tomas – you can always do it through the code/html tab for the editor window. Even if you set up the basics you can then type in using the rich editor. I’d guess you could also copy-paste a table in from elsewhere. I’ll look into adding the table to the menu bar in an upcoming release. I just rarely use table so I didn’t even think of it…
I have a black background for my page and the EVENT NAME field comes up in a dark maroon. It’s kind of hard to read. Is there a way to change the EVENT NAME colors?
Colors and style comes from your theme. MF Gig Calendar has minimal display styling. You’ll need to tweak your theme stylesheet.
I really like this plugin, but I’m suddenly having a problem with it. As far as I know nothing has changed with my site (no new plugins added, no updates to version of WP, etc.), but for some reason the field for entering the date of a gig is not there. So without a field to enter an event date each entry going in with today’s date. Please help.
Just posted an update. Hope it helps. Let me know…
How would I go about transferring the contents of the plugin from one wordpress install to another? New “/2014” site is on the same server/same domain etc.
Thanks!
It’s just a table in the database called wp_mfgigcal (or something similar depending on what prefix you assigned to WP when you set it up). You can use phpMyAdmin to export the contents of that table and then import it into your new setup. Should be pretty easy if you’ve ever worked with phpMyAdmin before. The plugin will just recognize the data.