Here’s what coming in version 3.12 of The Events Calendar, The Events Calendar PRO + all add-ons

Hey folks! The soon-to-be-released version 3.12 of The Events Calendar, The Events Calendar PRO + all add-ons was focused on some really significant features requested by the community, plus a healthy dose of bug fixes. We’re stoked to get the latest updates in your hands but wanted to give you a high level idea of what’s coming so you have idea of what’s ahead, what to watch out for and, of course, to get as excited as we are for the shiny new features!

1. Added new flexible recurrence patterns

This has been one of our most requested features. We have added a lot more flexibility around recurrence and the custom patterns you can configure. You can now create an event that starts on September 1st and will last 9 hours. It will occur every Tuesday until November 30th; every month on the 1st until March 2016; and Yearly on the Second Monday in February with no end date; but it will not occur on February 8th, 2016. You can also have events that recur within a single day at multiple times. Get creative- the freedom is yours! Learn more.

2. Improved WPML compatibility

As our plugins have become more widely used, we have heard a lot of concerns about compatibility with the WordPress Multilingual plugin (WPML). We made a stack of changes to The Events Calendar and Events Calendar PRO to make them compatible with WPML. We also have new knowledgebase articles that will help you get this setup!

3. Improved timezone support

We completely overhauled the timezone support throughout the plugins. Every event now has timezone data stored with it independent of the blog’s timezone. This allows events to be in different timezones and improves interaction with third party APIs. Learn more.

4. Extended CSV importer to respect more fields

The CSV importer now supports currency position, currency symbol, tags, organizer, venue, and custom fields defined in events settings.

5. Improved month view performance

Since our complete rewrite of Month View in 3.10, we have struggled with this view’s performance. We are now proud to announce that we have streamlined this a lot! We did extensive testing with Month Views populated with 7,000 events and were able to get typical page load times down under 3s.

6. New plugin coming soon: Community Tickets!

Many who run Community Events have inquired about the possibility of empowering community organizers to sell tickets for their events. This functionality is coming soon and we are actively running a beta alongside this release. We hope it’ll be generally available in the coming weeks!

7. A few dozen bug fixes and small tweaks

As always we strive to right our wrongs and generally make things better. The details of what we’ve fixed or tweaked will be available in the full changelog, which we’ll be sure to publish when 3.12 ships.

8. New actions

  • wootickets_after_create_ticket
  • wootickets_after_update_ticket
  • wootickets_after_save_ticket
  • wootickets_generate_ticket_attendee

9. New filters

  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_table_nav
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_event_summary_table_before
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_event_details_top
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_event_details_bottom
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_ticket_sales_top
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_ticket_sales_bottom
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_totals_top
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_totals_bottom
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_event_summary_table_after
  • tribe_events_tickets_attendees_event_title
  • tribe_events_venue_meta_box_template
  • tribe_show_organizer_email_obfuscation_alert
  • tribe_minutes_increment

10. There is newly deprecated code

In The Events Calendar, tribe_events_getLink is being deprecated in favor of tribe_events_get_link. Slated release for full retirement: 4.2

11. Some old deprecated code has been removed.

  • Tribe__Events__Advanced_Functions__Register_Meta::gmap_link() deprecated since 3.6 has been removed
  • Removed unused methods in Tribe__Events__Pro__Main: posts_fields() and posts_join().

12. Updated views

Each of the templates listed below have had changes. Particular attention should be paid to those with recommendations next to them. On all but the ones marked “important” we wouldn’t expect to see template overrides breaking if they were already compatible with 3.11 code.

The Events Calendar

  • single-event.php – removed conditional with deprecated filter
  • day/single-event.php – Changed title attribute function from the_title() to the_title_attribute()
  • list/single-event.php – Changed title attribute function from the_title() to the_title_attribute()

Events Calendar PRO

  • pro/modules/meta/additional-fields.php – Escaping
  • pro/widgets/mini-calendar-widget.php – Isolated tribe_show_month() query context so filters do not impact the Mini Calendar widget
  • pro/widgets/venue-widget.php – Better translation support on “View all” link text

Community Events

  • community/modules/custom.php – Added “None” option for radio and dropdown fields
  • community/modules/image.php – Added error message when image size is too large
  • community/edit-event.php – Support for Arbitrary Recurrence – important for continued support of recurrence!
  • community/modules/recurrence.php – Support for Arbitrary Recurrence – important for continued support of recurrence!
  • community/modules/custom.php – Bug fix to show additional field values as saved even when they have special characters
  • community/modules/datepickers.php – Timezone support
  • community/modules/cost.php – Add support for currency position

Eventbrite Tickets

  • eventbrite/import-eventbrite-events.php – Timezone tweaks
  • eventbrite/eb-admin-notices.php – New file for displaying Eventbrite notices

iCal Importer

  • import-form.php – Datepicker format tweaks, better escaping
  • hidden-messages.php – More specific error message, better escaping
  • edit-saved-recurring.php – Better escaping
  • ical-tab-content.php – Spacing
  • one-time-buttons.php – Better escaping
  • recurring-buttons.php – Better escaping, better translations
  • saved-imports-table.php – Better escaping
  • status-category-selector.php – Better escaping

WooCommerce Tickets, WP e-Commerce Tickets, Easy Digital Downloads Tickets, and Shopp Tickets

  • [ticketpluginname]/tickets.php – Removed HTML nowrap attribute

Users have told us that they like to see this list of high level changes to be aware of, so they can prepare their sites for the updates accordingly. We hope this serves you, too. If there’s anything we missed or that you think is important enough to get more explanation in this blog post, let us know and we’ll clarify as best we can. If you want to check out the code before we release, we are taking volunteers to test backwards compatibility and will post Release Candidates for 3.12 in the downloads area of your account when they are available.

We can’t wait to get this release in your hands, as our focus shifts to the big exciting changes coming in 4.0! We are excited about what’s in store and we hope you all will be too 🙂

Happy updating!