Can the plugin do this?

[Mark Excell]

I have a client who has a WordPress site who wants to show events. They have three specific requirements and I want to know if your plugin (plus addons) can do it without further customisation.

1) Show events in a list in alphabetical order
2) On the same page show a calendar on the same page and when someone clicks the date it takes the user direct to the event. (There is just ever one event per date)
3) On the same page show a google map with a custom pin and when the pin is clicked it takes you to the event. (No popup)

I’m assuming the first one is fine, but I assume 2 might be problematic and 3 might have real issues.

[George]

Thanks for reaching out, Mark! I’ll address of your specifications in turn:

1) Show events in a list in alphabetical order

This is unfortunately not possible without custom coding. 🙁

2) On the same page show a calendar on the same page and when someone clicks the date it takes the user direct to the event. (There is just ever one event per date)

I’m not quite sure what you mean here. Can you clarify what “On the same page show a calendar on the same page” means? I think what you’re describing is indeed a set of functionality our plugins support. Check out our demo site at wpshinding.com/events to see a working events page—click events there and see if things behave like you hope.

3) On the same page show a google map with a custom pin and when the pin is clicked it takes you to the event. (No popup)

I believe Events Calendar Pro’s “Map View” is what you’re looking for here—it’s indeed a clickable Google Map where each Map Pin is an event (as long as the event has a location, of course).

Check out our demo site’s version of the Map View to see if it’s akin to what you’re describing → http://wpshindig.com/events/map/

Let me know if this information helps, Mark, and any other questions you might have! 😀

— George

[Mark Excell]

Thank you George, but to go into further detail..

1) You say not without custom coding, what sort of custom coding would we be talking about. I.e. with a wp_query I can bring back results in any format, would the custom coding be the same sort of idea and I assume it would need to be added into the functions.php or is there a child feature I could use? (I.e. how open is the plugin, is there hooks and actions available to accommodate what I want to do?)

2) Can you format the calandar so it has the same function, but only shows the date and not the event name (on the basis one date = one event)

3) Nearly there but I need the click on the marker to trigger a redirect not bring up a pop up with the link in the pop up.

Does the above make sense?

[George]

Thanks for the follow-up, Mark.

I will address your updates here below. Before doing so, I should note that the “Core” features of the calendar are available totally for free here → wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar. The premium add-ons to this free Core plugin, like Events Calendar Pro, just add extra features to the core calendar functionality—so you may find it very helpful to tinker around with the Core calendar plugin and get a sense of how it all looks and works, take a look at its code to see what is involved with customizing it, etc.

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As for your followup questions, I can address #1 and #2 at the same time as follows:

• When I say that something is not possible without custom coding, all that I mean is that there is no “out-of-the-box” way to achieve what you describe—there is no setting or option you can check to make it so, in other words, nor any way to achieve it with the WordPress Customizer options for The Events Calendar.
• When it comes it what sort of actual custom coding would be required to achieve the desired outcome, however, we are unfortunately not able to shed much light on this—there are a number of ways to achieve any given customization, and even for license-holders we cannot assist at all with scoping, assessing, demonstrating, or doing customizations. You can read more about what Support we provide here → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/what-support-is-provided-for-license-holders/
• With all this being said, we do try to offer basic tips about customizations when able. So yes, for example, to achieve what you describe for #1 you would have to do some extensive writing of custom PHP code in your theme or in a custom plugin.
• Likewise, in regards to what you describe for #2, it sounds like you would have to make some extensive custom templating from within your theme (more on this below) and would also have to write a good deal of custom CSS and possibly JavaScript to achieve the desired look and functionality.
• As for what you mention in #3, this too is unfortunately not possible without custom coding. To clarify: Our “out-of-the-box” functionality for custom map pins includes literally just changing the image used for the map pin. To change the functionality of actions upon those map pins, you’d need to write custom JavaScript.

Now, in the opening of your follow-up here you ask about how open the code is and what reference materials there are for customizing. A few things on this point:

• Our plugins, like WordPress itself, are GPL-licensed. This affords you many freedoms in terms of customizing and altering our plugins. Read more here and here.
• The code itself is the best documentation of the code. So, for example, if you want to see how a specific function works within The Events Calendar, you can’t find a better resource on how it works than locating the function itself within the code, and reading the code directly to ascertain each aspect of how it works.
• Along with the code itself, we have a number of documentation resources:
  • Check out our Knowledgebase for extensive Knowledgebase coverage of features, code, and functionality → http://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase
  • Our Themer’s Guide is especially widely-used by folks—it covers, in detail, how to make custom templates with our plugins (which I mentioned doing above) → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/themers-guide/
  • We’ve also got a technical reference here of all functions within the code → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/themers-guide/

Apologies for the length of this—I just wanted to thoroughly address your questions so you can best move forward with your decisions and project. Please let me know if this helps and if there are any other issues or questions I can try to help with!

Thanks,
George

[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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