Past Events Don't Remove (Please explain)

[Ryan]

I am interested in using this software but utterly lost by the fact that past events don’t auto remove…

It’s pretty obvious that this would be a key feature, even if they just moved to an archive section…. The fact that I can not do this baffles me completely.

Can you explain if this can be achieved and if not please explain why the development of such a thing was not considered when creating this plugin…

[George]

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for reaching out. You say, “please explain why the development of such a thing was not considered when creating this plugin.”

Why do you say this feature wasn’t considered—how would you be able to know that information? 😀

I can assure you it was, and is often re-considered! So it may end up in our plugins at some time.

For now, here are a few reasons why our plugins do not auto-erase events at this time:

1. The presence of past events does not interfere with exploring new events. In our Month and Week Views, we make it clear what day is the “current” day, and so at a quick glance a visitor can see what events are happening today or are upcoming. Past events are shown at a lower opacity, to further clarify how they have “passed”. In our List Views, the views start at the “Upcoming Events” view; so, the first event shown at the top of any list view is the next-approaching upcoming event. You cannot even see past events unless you actively page backwards by clicking “Previous Events.”

2. The fact that an event occurs on a certain date is not only relevant if this date is in the future. Having a record of what events occur when is useful regardless.

3. Technical difficulty: have some automatic “job” running that deletes any event as soon as it becomes a “past” event is not as easy technically as it may sound conceptually. It would rely on a cron job, for example, but as a WordPress plugin we can only hook into the WP Cron system. WordPress’ WP-Cron system is not a “true” cron, and so it can be challenging to have a system reliably cleaning out “past” events without making a significant performance impact on the site—especially if there are many events. This is further complicated if there are Events Calendar Pro recurring events; if singular instances of the series are past, it is not trivial to only remove those instances without affecting the entire series.

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We have two temporary workarounds that might be helpful. Neither one actually DELETES past events, but hides them.

Here is a PHP code snippet that might work well → http://pastebin.com/uHCEjEiB

Here is a CSS method that targets the Month View specifically → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/hide-past-events-on-the-events-calendars-month-view/

I hope all of this information helps!

Cheers,
George

[Support Droid]

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If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
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