Additional Functionality

[Luke]

Hello Events Calendar,

We recently started on a new site (using Alone theme, which supports you) for a non-profit Mending Kids, and we wanted to be sure your plugin had the appropriate functionality before we take things further (Pro).

In comparison to their prior site we are trying to build an attractive and pleasing experience for people looking at their upcoming events.

On the free version of The Events Calendar certain functionality we need are lacking:

1. Visual Composer block for custom content (testimonial, logo grid, accordion FAQ)
2. Google map
3. Flickr custom sidebar gallery

Will your Pro version, or specific add ons, provide us this functionality?

Thanks for your reply,
Luke

[Geoff]

Howdy Luke and thanks for reaching out! I’m so glad to hear you’ve been enjoying The Events Calendar so far and are considering upgrading to a premium version. 🙂

Google Maps is something that should come right out of the box with The Events Calendar. In other words, the plugin allows you to set a location for each event and that will display on the event page when published as long as the setting to display the map is enabled in Events > Settings (screenshot).

I’m afraid the other two features are things that our plugins do not currently support directly in the plugin settings. That said, there are a number of plugins that offer a visual composer editing experience and Flickr photo integration that may be worth considering to use with the calendar. While I haven’t tested these myself here is a plugin that says it supports visual composer functionality for custom post types and another that creates a Flickr widget.

Does this help answer your question? Please let me know.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Luke]

Thanks for getting right back to us Geoff!

The plugin you sent for Visual Composer is Visual Composer. We currently use Visual Composer on our site as the page builder.

Right now the only way we are able to see text for the Event description is to put it in the Excerpt section on the editor. Strange?? VC is available in the main edit section, but it shows nothing 🙁

That is why I asked if you had an add-on to make it work. This might be a bug, as well as the Map not displaying. http://www.aquaowlet.mendingkids.org/events/

On the Flickr gallery would be much preferred to have the client add images directly to the event post. Instead of customizing widgets.

Let me know what you think.

And thanks again for helping us with this. Really want to make your plugin our choice 🙂
Best, Luke

[Geoff]

Thanks for following up, Luke!

I have heard of folks using Visual Composer with The Events Calendar successfully. At the same time, I have heard a reports where the two plugins are not fully compatible with one another and, though I am unable to locate those reports offhand, it sounds like the limitation you spotted is in line with what we’ve heard.

That said, I know we’re interested in being as fully compatible as we can with layout building plugins like Visual Composer, but I’m afraid that some changes have to be made on the other plugin’s side as well in order to make things work perfectly together.

On the Flickr gallery would be much preferred to have the client add images directly to the event post. Instead of customizing widgets.

The calendar templates themselves are fully customizable in the sense that you can override any of them in your theme folder and modify the code to suit your needs. So, for example, you could use a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields to add custom fields to the events editor for Flickr images and then incorporate those custom fields into the calendar template. As far the calendar integrating directly with Flickr right out of the box, though, that’s not a supported feature.

Did you have any other questions about integrations or features? Let me know and I’d be happy to help as best I can!

Cheers,
Geoff

[Luke]

Thanks for getting back to us Geoff. Appreciate your feedback.

We are really looking to have our full description show when users are in the individual events page (bottom of post where “Find Out More” link is). The short description is great for the list view, but we wouldn’t want it to be shortened at the individual event page. Since that is the furthest you can go for each event.

And that’s really about all, the rest I can change with CSS.

Thanks for your help,
Luke

[Geoff]

Hey Luke, hope you’re having a great day!

That’s odd — the long description should display on the individual event post by default. Here’s an example of that right from our demo site.

Do you happen to know if the theme has customized versions of the calendar template in it? You can check by opening the theme folder and looking for a folder called tribe-events in there.

If there is no tribe-events folder in there, then you may need to either create your own customized version of the template, or try switching to a default WordPress theme just to confirm that the reason there is no conflict in the theme that is preventing the full post description from displaying.

Let’s start there and see what we find. In the meantime, I am going to move this thread over to our technical support forum.

Thanks!
Geoff

[Luke]

Thanks Geoff for getting back to us!

I looked in the theme folder and there is indeed a tribe-events folder.

I can alter any code you need me to or I can provide you login to troubleshoot it, if you would like.

Really appreciate your help. BTW we are using Alone Theme from Theme Forest.

Thanks again!
Luke

[Geoff]

Nice, thanks for checking on that!

Would you be willing to reach out to the theme author? Definitely not trying to push you away from here, but I think they would be more suited to provide guidance since they will be more familiar with the customizations they made to the template.

In short, I think something in there will need to be change to call the_content() instead of the event excerpt but, again, the theme author will certainly be able to identify what was changed and how to revert it without it having any negative affects on other possible customizations that have been made.

I’ll keep this thread open in the meantime in case questions come up in that exchange that I can help answer. Let’s see what we find from there.

Thanks!
Geoff

[Luke]

Thanks for getting back Geoff,

Unfortunately the theme authors are very unresponsive. But I will give it a try.

Thanks for your help,
Luke

[Geoff]

Sure thing! I’ll keep this thread open in the meantime so definitely keep me posted.

Geoff

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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