Is this the right calendar for my use case?

[cd83]

I have a website for tour dates of various bands and am looking at upgrading the calendar services. The Events Calendar looks great but I want to make sure it will do all that I want with the appropriate add-ons.

These are the requirements:

1. Customized info in calendar view along with Event (For example, “NY: Rush Tour 2015”.) On the free version there does not seem to be an option to modify what information is displayed on the calendar view. This is crucial as this website is for all of the United States and Canada, for many different bands, tours, and festivals, and there are already over 10 different tours going on each day in different states, which would make the calendar view impossible to decipher.

2. Searchable by band, venue/state/city, type of event. I see Filter Bar allows for sorting of “Event Category, post tag, venue, organizer, day of the week, time of day, and price”, does this mean that each band would have to be a Tag? Would ‘Tour’ and ‘Festival’ be the Event Category?

3. ‘Notify Me when a tour is added for my City / State’ I am currently using MailChimp for my mailing list, which is simply a weekly newsletter type and I would like to offer customized notifications – do you offer this type of service?

4. It looks like with everything I want to do, including Community Events and a ticketing add-on, I’m looking at having to purchase at least 3 of your add-ons. Do you offer any sort of multi-add-on discount?

Thanks, looking forward to your reply.

[Geoff]

Hey there, cd83! Thanks for getting in touch and we’re stoked that you’re checking out the plugins. 🙂

1. Customized info in calendar view along with Event

All of our templates can be completely customized by overriding them in your theme directory. It takes a little development on your end, but we do have a very thorough Themer’s Guide that details the process step-by-step.

Additionally, we have a whole slew of functions detailed in our documentation that you can hook into to alter the output or display of content. For example, here’s a snippet for how to include the category name in your event title.

https://gist.github.com/geoffgraham/014d26b9262488721518

2. Searchable by band, venue/state/city, type of event.

I think Filter Bar is definitely the way to go here. And, you’re spot on that Bands as Tags and Tours/Festivals as Categories makes a lot of sense.

If you want to take it a step further, The Events Calendar PRO includes additional fields that can be used to display custom content or details.

3. ‘Notify Me when a tour is added for my City / State’

We do offer an RSS feed for events and all event categories but, unfortunately, not a built-in notification feature. We’re actually reviewing this sort of functionality, but don’t have a timeframe for if or when it would be developed.

I believe MailChimp’s RSS-to-Email feature would be an option for you in the meantime. Enter the URL for the event feed, then let MailChimp email it out to those who have subscribed to be notified.

Do you offer any sort of multi-add-on discount?

We do not, though we sometimes do send out promotions and discounts via Twitter and Facebook. Follow us there if you want to be in the loop. 🙂

One last thing I’ll add is that all our products comes with a full 30-day refund. Give them a shot and see if they’re the right fit for you.

Does this help answer your questions? Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions and I’d be happy to help. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[cd83]

Thanks for the quick reply! Of course, I always have more questions.

Is there functionality in the CSV import for tags? I’ve been playing around with it and it seems that the only option for this is to upload the CSV with Event Name (tour name), Event Category (tour or fest), Start Date / Time, and Venue, and then go in manually and bulk edit the events to add tags.

Additionally, are the additional fields provided by PRO able to be filtered in Filter Bar? Can you rename ‘Tags’ to ‘Bands’ without PRO?

[Geoff]

My pleasure! More questions aren’t a bad thing at all. 🙂

Is there functionality in the CSV import for tags?

No, there is not. Admittedly, there is room for improvement with the CSV importer, but I think you’re idea of bulking editing for tags hits the mark right on. That’s a totally valid way to go about it.

Here’s a brief tutorial with a video walkthrough of the CSV importer you might find useful.

Additionally, are the additional fields provided by PRO able to be filtered in Filter Bar?

Oh, interesting question. The short answer is no, not right out of the box. The longer answer, however, seems to be yes with some custom development. I found this thread  and another one where other customers found a way to do it and shared the solution–it’s worth seeing if these would work for you as well.

Can you rename ‘Tags’ to ‘Bands’ without PRO?

This would be a little trickier, but I think it would be possible. For example, here’s a link to a snippet that shows how to change the text for any string on a page:

https://gist.github.com/geoffgraham/33da9072d9a3a8206f99

I hope this helps!

Geoff

[cd83]

Awesome, thanks again for the fast response. It looks like I’ve got some homework, but it also looks like I’ve found the right product!

[Geoff]

Fantastic! Thanks for following up–I’m glad the plugins looks like a good fit. 🙂

I’ll go ahead and close this thread, but please don’t hesitate to start a new one if any other questions pop up and we’d be happy to help.

Cheers!
Geoff

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