Not understanding how to embed the calendar into a page

[clarity]

I am a bit confused here. I have read through the “getting started” support pages. I have gone through the settings. I see I can set my home page to the calendar. But I have no theme control over that page. I cannot set up anything else on the page, what layout it has, whether or not it is full width or has a sidebar. I have no control. Further, I cannot find any documentation about this.

I am a new user. I bought pro and filter bar. This should absolutely not be this hard to find out how to embed the calendar into a page you can format or control.

What am I missing? Where is the documentation on how to set up views? How to embed the calendar into a page? I have searched. I cannot find anything about this.

[Cliff]

Hi. Thanks for your purchases. Sorry for the frustration your setup process has caused you. I can help with this.

Here are a few quick tips:

• It is not possible to set your Events page to your site’s home page. There’s a setting at wp-admin > Events > Settings > “Events URL slug” that tells you where your “Events page” is located.
• You cannot “embed” the Events page into other WordPress pages. However, you may choose to use one of our plugin’s widgets or shortcodes throughout your site.
• The Events page is technically a WordPress archive page for the “tribe_events” post type, not a “regular WordPress page” that you can apply a page template to, for example.
• For some customization, you can play with the first 2 options at wp-admin > Events > Settings > Display tab >
  • Default stylesheet used for events templates
  • Events template
• For full customization, you’d need to refer to our Themer’s Guide

I hope this information clears things up for you.

Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

Thanks!

[clarity]

OK, so these settings didn’t make anything better. Let me see if I understand this…

To display the full calendar and tools in WordPress, you have to go to a specific URL which calls on the
theme’s archive page for styling.

To modify this, one has to build a custom archive page and design and style it in html and CSS.

There are no pre-designed page templates to load for style.

Modern Tribe will not give out any theme code that will give us a design to work with, nothing similar to the demo calendar site.

If you want a good looking page, you have to design or hire a designer.

Is this about correct? Because this sure wasn’t defined when we bought the package we bought. We saw a beautiful calendar on a nicely laid out page with a header and background. What we get is a simple calendar put onto a page with a forced right sidebar and no header, and no way without coding to fix this.

Our theme is DIVI from Elegantthemes.com, but we would be willing to change, with the right solution. However, DIVI is one of the simplest and most customizable themes we have every used.

Please advise us of the steps we would need to take with this theme to get from point A to B, from this page:

http://avindustrycalendar.com

to this page (or similar):

http://wpshindig.com/events/

Thanks…

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by clarity.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by clarity.

[Cliff]

Clarity, I think our plugin’s designers would strongly disagree with, “If you want a good looking page, you have to design or hire a designer.”

Our paid add-ons are just that — add-ons. The free WordPress.org plugin is the core/foundation of the add-ons. As we don’t have additional/custom skins or themes for the plugin (just the built-in ones), your calendar should look similar to how the free version appears.

The plugin’s code is able to be leveraged by designers/coders to create custom layouts, styling, etc.

To the point of your question — getting styling similar to http://wpshindig.com/events/ — you’d have to be specific about what exactly you’re wanting from that page’s styling.

• Are you wanting help with the colors (I don’t think the blue would match your red site)?
• The background image (not related to The Events Calendar at all)?
• The font?
• The hover effect (just add a featured image and event description to your test event)?

We have many Divi Theme users. Things like header images, menus, background images, etc. aren’t handled by The Events Calendar. It’s a plugin, not a plugin plus a theme. It can only control its own styling, not the overall site’s styling like a theme does.

If there are some specific things you’re wanting assistance with, please request them and I’ll let you know how I can best help.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

[Cynthia Lockley]

@clarity If you are asking how to embed the month view calendar into your home page like it is on http://events.stcwdc.org/ Do the following.
1. I am assuming you have created a child theme for your theme. In the functions.php in your child theme, add the following function:

<?php
//
// *************************************
// Events Calendar fix
// Ensures proper css and javascript have been enqueued in the theme header
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
//
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'enqueue_month_view_scripts');
function enqueue_month_view_scripts() {
if ( is_front_page() ) {
Tribe__Events__Template_Factory::asset_package('ajax-calendar');
Tribe__Events__Template_Factory::asset_package('events-css');
}
}
?>

2. Add the following line to your copy of index.php in your child theme right below

	<div id="primary" class="content-area">
		<main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">

<?php
//-------------------------------------------
// Put Events Calendar on home page
//-------------------------------------------
tribe_show_month();
?>

The main calendar is always in the /events page on your site with a navigation bar and the ability to see other views. The above will let you show it on your home page but without the nav bar and other views selection.

I hope this helps.

[clarity]

Cliff,

We want a home page to be the calendar… the full searchable calendar. We want the option on that page to use other wordpress functions… sidebars, widgets, etc. I guess our understanding was that we could style a page and have that nice looking calendar fall into the middle of the page. That is what it appears like in your demo. But, thats wrong. To style a page, you must code. To bring in WP components, you must code. To put the full calendar into a page with any WP components, a page has to be designed.

So, now we have the option of creating a custom page. To do this, we must rely on modifying the default template (which, by the way, is NOT where the documentation says it is), and we have to make a child theme for our theme (which is NOT defined in the theming documentation). I would be glad to point out both of these omissions for you in your documentation.

2. Locate the files you wish to edit

The template view files are located inside the plugin folders /src/views/ directory. For example:

The Events Calendar Pro template files
/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/views/

Well, after some searching, we found that the default-template.php is not in the pro folder, but in the events calendar folder. I guess this didn’t make sense as we bought the PRO version. Why would we be editing the regular version. But we eventually figured that out.

Next, the themer’s guide says:

…you can override these files with custom files that you place in your theme. It’s important that you don’t edit the view files directly in the plugin, you should copy them into your theme first, and edit them there.

Why would you put these files in your theme… a location that will potentially be wiped with a theme update? So, this leads to understanding that to do any styling, you MUST create a child theme. However, in the themer’s guide, it never mentions a “child theme”.

Sorry, a bit of frustration here as this is where we finally learned that we now have to build a child theme and then copy components over from the regular and possibly the pro calendar code, and we must build our own PHP code to do things like integrate other WP components into the existing theme.

So now that we are here… here is what we are trying to do…

We would like to embed an ad management system from WordPress onto the same page as the calendar. If the calendar worked in a WP page, this would be easy to do. Now, we would need to find an ad management plugin that will allow us to php code it into a page, but still work in the WP admin. Then we have to figure out how to customize a page to look like the rest of the site and hand-code these elements into the page. If the calendar were available to us as a module – heck, even a block of code, we could embed it into a block module in Divi, our theme (no, not just the simple calendar display – the full calendar display). I can put code into a Divi block… if I could only figure out how to put the default-template.php into a code section, this would be easy.

Next, we would like to style this custom home calendar page template… as we cannot use a WP template page, we have to write the code to make a page layout that works with the existing WP menu system that currently displays at the top of the page, and work it around embedding some other WP thing we want in the page, like Widgets.

I guess I as much disappointed as I am confused. Why can I not just embed the default-template.php into a code block into a theme page so I can wrap it into our environment without having to code a whole custom page and then try to figure out get other WP components working on that page? This was not clear when we bought the Pro version and add-ons.

[Cliff]

Clarity, I hear your frustration and apologize for any inaccurate or incomplete documentation. Yes, please provide links and your write-up of where/what should be amended or added.

===

Regarding child themes, the first bullet at https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes, under Why Use a Child Theme, states:

If you modify a theme directly and it is updated, then your modifications may be lost. By using a child theme you will ensure that your modifications are preserved.

Child theming is one of the basics of WordPress customizations, which might be why it’s not explicitly stated at https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/themers-guide/

Again, feel free to share your suggestions for our documentation at that link and any other.

===

As far as your project requirements go, you might want to consider Cynthia’s suggestion (a big effort help there; thanks, Cynthia!), however it’s not currently a supported implementation (that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or won’t work).

You could also create a custom shortcode and put that shortcode in a widget or a Divi item.

Or, just like http://wpshindig.com/, the home page could redirect to your events page, like http://wpshindig.com/events/

Another option is to use the Event Rocket plugin, which was coded by one of our developers. It might be exactly what you’re looking for. As with all third-party plugins and themes, we cannot guarantee compatibility or functionality.

===

For setting up advertising areas on the Events archive customizations, my 4 new widget areas plugin might benefit you.

===

While my goal is definitely to help you find a pleasing solution and use our products long-term, we have a pretty great Refund Policy if you decide you need it.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

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.

[Author]

Posts