Documentation for configuring home page

[David]

I’ve spent 30 minutes searching the Knowledge Base for details of how to configure the home page of my site (add, remove, or change the featured events; change the sponsor logos; those kinds of things). I cannot find any documentation or help that seems remotely relevant to my needs.

I think this functionality used to be under Appearance / Theme Options / Homepage (or similar), but it seems it’s not any more.

Please could you help me find some basic documentation?

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi David,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

The following Knowledgebase article can give you some more information about how to set your main calendar as your homepage:

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/how-to-make-your-calendar-your-sites-home-page/

Let me know if you have any other questions on this topic!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[David]

Thanks for the reply, Jaime,

Yes, I had already found that Knowledge Base article. I was astonished that it was the only I could find that mentions configuring the home page. Unfortunately it doesn’t touch on any of the configurations that we want to make.

As I said, the sorts of changes we want to make include adding, removing, or changing the featured events, and changing the sponsor logos. Where is the documentation for that, please?

If there is no documentation, please could you tell me how to do it?

thanks, David

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi David,

In order to change which events are featured, you can go to the individual Edit Event page for each event and select (or unselect) Featured Event on the right sidebar and Update.

As far as changing the logo on the page, I’m not quite sure where you are referring to.  Would you mind taking a screenshot to provide some more clarity?

Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[David]

Thanks, Jaime.

Yes, I have selected the Featured Event on the right side – see first attached screenshot.

However, the home page does not display this event – instead it shows a message “Please use correct published Event ID.” See also the second attached screenshot and http://ramsgatefestival.org/.

We would like to refresh the home page, which currently shows elements from last year’s festival and last year’s sponsor logos (again see the second screenshot at http://ramsgatefestival.org/), but the feature to configure the home page layout appears to have been removed since last year. Is that right? In which case, how do we edit the layout?

thanks, David

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi David,

Unfortunately, you cannot configure the homepage in the way that you are describing, if you are using the main event page.  That is because it is an archive page, so it cannot be edited in the same way as a traditional page or post.  This feature was never available, although you do have some options for how to configure this yourself.

Please also note that support for customizations is limited as stated in our support policy.

In order to test if that message is related to your theme, can you try switching to a default WordPress theme, like ‘Twentyseventeen’, and see if the message goes away?

In the meantime, I’d recommend taking a look at your stylesheets and page templates and see if altering these settings helps you to achieve the results that you are looking for:

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/stylesheets-and-page-templates/

These stylesheets and page templates can give you more flexibility on how to create your main events page, which may assist with your desired layout changes.

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[David]

Hi Jaime,

Thanks for this. I’m afraid you lost me quite early in your response, because you’re using terms that are unfamiliar to me.

Firstly, you say “if you are using the main event page”. I didn’t know we were using the main event page. What is the main event page, and how do we change to use something else? I’ve searched the knowledge base for “main event page”, but can’t find anything that looks relevant. Please advise on how to switch to something other than the main event page if that is the problem.

Secondly, you say “That is because it is an archive page”. Is it? It wasn’t an archive page when we set it up for last year’s festival. It was set up using the home page feature in the Events Calendar plugin. Again I’ve searched the Knowledge Base for “archive page” and I can’t find anything that looks relevant. So I’m stuck.

We have not changed our site since August 2017. All we’ve done is update the plugin, renew the licence, and delete some events and blog posts from last year. Now it seems we’ve lost control of the site.

Please advise how I can edit our home page. At the moment I don’t seem to be able to do this at all, and this is embarrassing and hard to explain to our users, when the home page is looks clearly “broken” to them.

I’m keen to find a basic solution that does not require knowledge of CSS, since we do not have those skills in-house.

We really want the basic functionality that was available in 2016 and 2017. If that has been removed from The Events Calendar PRO plugin we may have to get a refund for our licence for the next year, which I have just paid.

Looking forward to your swift, clear and well-referenced reply.

David

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi David,

As mentioned in the article that I linked you to, you can set the Main Events Page as your homepage.  You can check if this is the case by going to Settings < Reading and it should look like this:

Right now, it looks like you may have your blog page as your homepage, with your events included in the main blog loop.

The way that you would edit that page if you’d like to leave it as is may be managed through your theme, if you are using a front-end editor or page builder of some kind.

I can assure you that nothing has changed within our plugin about how the layouts are managed.

As I mentioned previously, in order to test if that message is related to your theme, can you try switching to a default WordPress theme, like ‘Twentyseventeen’, and see if the message goes away?

Let me know how all of that goes and if you have any other questions along the way!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

 

[David]

Thanks again, Jaime,

I’ve been in touch with our hosting company about the theme, and that does indeed seem to have resolved the issue.

Thank you for your time and your patience.

all the best, David

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Glad we could help, you are welcome back in our support forums any time!

Since you marked this thread as Resolved, I am going to close this thread.

Have a great week!

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