Can't have event post with sidebar with X theme

[Geoff]

Hi Piccia,

My name is Geoff and I head up support here for Modern Tribe. I wanted to reply to you directly because I’ve been following this thread and want to make sure you know we’re taking it seriously.

It’s very clear you’re upset and disappointed that there is a conflict between X Theme and The Events Calendar. Having worked in the WordPress space myself for many years, I can completely relate and empathize with the frustration that comes when two pieces of a site you expect to work independently do not work well together. It can be time-consuming (as you’ve made quite clear here) and a let-down to say the least.

I spent hours tweaking the CSS to make it work with my site, but basically you are saying that this very expensive plugin will not do what my client wants it to do, and what we had a right to expect it would do right out of the box.

There certainly is a price tag for Events Calendar PRO, though I do want to throw in a reminder that The Events Calendar itself is free of charge and we give it away freely in the same spirit that Automattic freely gives away WordPress. And while PRO is $89 and is by no means “cheap” we do make every effort to ensure you get the value you would expect for such a price, including a full 30-days to return the plugin for a complete refund for any and every reason.

I take a lot of heart to what you say is a “right to expect [the plugin] would do right out of the box.” Is there something we communicated that is inconsistent with what the plugin promises to do? The reason I ask is because I would hate to find out that we are making false promises anywhere and I want to do everything in my power to make sure that any misleading or untrue statements are resolved–it’s not in our or your best interest to make those claims and I want to be sure those are scrubbed if they do exist.

Along those same lines, I hope you can appreciate the fact that there is only so much we can claim the plugin is able to do right out of the box. The Events Calendar is built to be as flexible and extensible as we believe it can possibly be and, while we do make our best effort to be compatible with as many themes as we can, it is simply impossible to not only be compatible with everything, but to add disclaimers for those that are incompatible. Doing so would be difficult and unmanageable as well. That’s why we offer the refund policy we do and make a stand to ensure our plugins work right out of the box with any standard WordPress theme.

That’s sort of the pro and the con of the WordPress ecosystem. It’s open-source and encourages a ton of innovation, but that also opens the gate for deviations from the core WordPress product itself. So, in the absence of true and consistent standards, we hold ourselves up to what WordPress itself packages so that The Events Calendar truly does work right out of the box.

On top of this, the fact that you delayed your final answer by so long meant that I invested quite a bit more time on the CSS, which I definitely would not had done had I know earlier that you had no intention of making the plugin work for me.

In looking through this thread, I’m a little troubled because it appears that Cliff has made every effort to respond to you, even going further than our stated policy of guaranteeing one reply per day. The exception to this was yesterday on a Saturday which is outside of normal business hours. Is there something in the chain of replies that leads you to believe we were untimely or neglecting you? I would definitely hate to have you or any customer feel that way and want to make sure that’s not the case–even going so far as to reply to you here on a Sunday.

On that same note, I’ve seen no indication from Cliff that we are unwilling to help make the plugin work for you. We would be happy to do our very best, falling short of custom development that we are unfortunately unable to provide here in the forums. It’s important to note that this is a multi-dimensional issue and one that would require the theme developer just as much as Modern Tribe. I cannot offer any guarantees, but we would be happy to answer any questions or ideas that the theme developer has in mind that we could do on our end to help make the plugin and theme work together.

I am extremely disappointed as you have basically sold me a plugin that cannot do something as simple as having a sidebar.

I totally understand the frustration but do want to challenge you a bit in suggesting that this is a “simple” issue. The Events Calendar does allow sidebars and does work with default WordPress themes as well as many others that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. The fact that the sidebar is not working with X Theme suggests that the issue lays with coding and development that we would be unable to anticipate from something that deviates from a default WordPress environment.

And, again, I do think it is extremely important to note that we are happy to refund you at any point within our 30-day refund window. While it would be a bummer to lose you as a customer, I have no intention of “selling” you anything that you cannot back out of without reasonable notice. That’s what we offer in our refund policy and is the reason we offer it at all.

At least please don’t tell me that you appreciate me as that’s blatantly not true.

I have no intention of patronizing you and hope you can accept my sincere effort to reach out and attempt to clarify things. If you are still interested in keeping this conversation going, we are completely willing to answer any questions from you or theme developer that might help lead to a better integration between the theme and the plugin. On the other hand, if you would prefer to go the route of a refund, I completely accept that and we would be happy to do that for you with no other trouble of complications on our end. In the end, I hope this at least shows we are willing to do right by you as far as we reasonably can.

Sincerely,
Geoff

[kelligirl]

Hi… Just wanted to supply a workaround since I just ran into the same problem.

I made a custom template for X and uploaded the files (2 of them) to my child theme. I used the formats for the template-layout-content-sidebar.php files (located in the main X folder, as well as the x/framework/views/stack folder).

To get sidebars working, in the file that goes in the childtheme/framework/views/stack/ folder, I replaced
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> with

<aside class=”x-sidebar right” role=”complementary”>
<?php dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar-main’); ?>
</aside>

Once you’ve got your new template files uploaded, choose your new template the Events Calendar settings and…Voila! Your main sidebar should appear. Of course, if you make a custom sidebar for the events, you can replace ‘sidebar-main’ with whatever your new sidebar ID is.

Hope that helps!!

[Piccia]

Hi Geoff,

thank you very much for taking the time to reply to me in such detail – it is very much appreciated.

I have to rush off now so I don’t have the time to reply accordingly but I just want to thank you for now. Will give it time this evening when i’m back.

Kelly, I will definitely try that and I thank you very much for the tip!

All best to both

Piccia

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Piccia.

[Geoff]

@kelligirl — that looks like a really solid way to go about it! thanks so much for sharing that with us. 🙂

Piccia, let us know if that suggestion helps get things back on track. Cliff is also in the loop here and would be happy to help guide you in that direction if you need some assistance.

Cheers,
Geoff

[Cliff]

Piccia, I have X Theme (but haven’t ever used it much).

On a fresh WordPress install with only X Theme and The Events Calendar (free/core, not PRO) active, I created a new event and viewed the single event I just created and saw this: http://cl.ly/2S030V1T3o2S

Then I activated PRO and it displayed the same way.

I’m guessing you are NOT seeing the same thing.

Please see if you can replicate in your install or if there are some X settings or layouts you’re specifically having issues with — or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re looking for when you say the sidebar isn’t displaying.

Looking forward to hearing back. Thank you.

[Piccia]

Hi Cliff,

Sorry for the delay with this – have been tied up with another project and only now can I work on this again.

yes I can get a post with the sidebar like that. However, when I do that, the main events page, the one that should have the main events calendar, breaks. So: post with sidebar – broken events page. Post without sidebar – no problem with Events page.

I am going to try Kelly’s workaround and let you know what happens.

Thank you!

[Piccia]

@kelligirl – sorry, I am a bit lost here so if either you or @Cliff could help that would be great.

I am confused as to what I should call the two file templates that I should upload to my child theme (I am already using a child theme).

Also, why 2?

I thought I should base one of the two templates on the template-layout-content-sidebar.php file. But I am not sure – This is what is in that file:
?php x_get_view( x_get_stack(), ‘template’, ‘layout-content-sidebar’ ); ?>

When you say

“To get sidebars working, in the file that goes in the childtheme/framework/views/stack/ folder, I replaced
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> with

<aside class=”x-sidebar right” role=”complementary”>
<?php dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar-main’); ?>
</aside>’

Which file is that? How should I call it?

And which one is the other file that should go in there?

I am sorry to be a a pain but I am not a developer so I’m afraid that I am rather lost. If anyone understands more clearly what I should be doing and could give me the steps, I would be extremely grateful.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Piccia.

[Cliff]

Hi Piccia. As I stated before, I’m not experienced with X Theme, but I do own it. I only tested with basic X Theme installation. I didn’t apply any stacks or other settings. If you provide me the details of your X Theme setup, I may be able to figure something out in a short amount of time (but no guarantees).

And/Or maybe Kelli can help…

Thanks.

[Support Droid]

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If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

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