Recurring events, venues and ideas on a directory?

[Neill]

I love Events Calendar Pro, but have some questions on some integrations I would like to make. I realise that this falls outside of the normal element of support, but someone may well be able to point me in the right direction.

I run a website about historic motorsport. I’m writing a series of profiles and race circuit guides, which I would like to publish on the ‘venues’ category. I have also written a series of topical events in the history of each venue, which I would like to make recurring events. That way, the website can develop a kind of ‘On This Day’ series for the calendar.

For example, F1 driver Ronnie Petersen died after an accident at Monza in September 1978. This entry / article would commemorate this each year under both Monza and September. This way, readers will be able to find useful facts under both a geographical and date context.

Additionally, I would like to create a business directory that will show things in the vicinity of each venue. EG places to stay around Monza.

My queries are:

1. Recurring events seem to create a new event each year, rather than one entry. This would be bad for SEO and duplicate content, is there a way to change this? I read in the support area about canonical urls to control it, but I didn’t fully understand how this would work.

2. If I search for any of these related entries using a standard WordPress search box, nothing appears, I assume that is due to the custom fields used. Is there a solution?

3. When creating normal blog articles about subjects, I would like to be able to associate them with the venue in Events Calendar. For example, I write an article on Ferraris at Monza, I would like to be able to tag the venue so that it appears under the venue page.

4. Does anyone have any suggestions on a good business directory plugin that might integrate with Events Calendar? For example, to offer specialist services / accommodation etc in the vicinity of a venue. That way, people buying a directory entry will have their entry appear in a useful, contextual way.

I know this is a bit of a long post, but hopefully someone may be able to nudge me in the right direction. I’d like to make Events Calendar the core ‘engine’ of my website, as it has so many useful elements to it.

Neill W

[Barry]

Hi Neill,

Interesting stuff.

You’re right that this largely falls out of what we would generally provide support for, but I’ll be happy to offer what guidance I can.

Recurring events seem to create a new event each year, rather than one entry. This would be bad for SEO and duplicate content, is there a way to change this? I read in the support area about canonical urls to control it, but I didn’t fully understand how this would work.

I guess there are a few ways you might tackle this and a canonical URL could certainly be a part of that – whereby for all recurring events you specify a single page as – in a sense – the “master” which should be indexed by search engines. This might be the /all/ events page.

With some slight wizardry, you could alternatively or additionally override links to single recurring event posts so that they all point to the /all/ page (or just to the next upcoming event).

2. If I search for any of these related entries using a standard WordPress search box, nothing appears, I assume that is due to the custom fields used. Is there a solution?

I’d need a little more detail – are you searching for data contained outside of the event title/description, here? It is certainly true that things such as the event categories and any additional fields are not indexed (by default).

3. When creating normal blog articles about subjects, I would like to be able to associate them with the venue in Events Calendar. For example, I write an article on Ferraris at Monza, I would like to be able to tag the venue so that it appears under the venue page.

Perhaps something like Posts 2 Posts could give you a head start on this?

4. Does anyone have any suggestions on a good business directory plugin that might integrate with Events Calendar? For example, to offer specialist services / accommodation etc in the vicinity of a venue. That way, people buying a directory entry will have their entry appear in a useful, contextual way.

I’m afraid I don’t have any particular recommendations here, but if other members of the community do they are welcome to chip in – beyond that I can only suggest researching existing offerings 🙂

Thanks!

[Neill]

2. If I search for any of these related entries using a standard WordPress search box, nothing appears, I assume that is due to the custom fields used. Is there a solution?

I’d need a little more detail – are you searching for data contained outside of the event title/description, here? It is certainly true that things such as the event categories and any additional fields are not indexed (by default).

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the reply, been away for a couple of days working. Yes, what I was meaning is that if I search for exam,e, ‘Monza’ in the default WordPress search, then standard WordPress articles I’ve written will appear, but nothing in Events Calendar. The same thing is applicable to WooCommerce, actually.

I imagine that there must be, somewhere, a more comprehensive plugin that can search all fields?

Post 2 Posts looks an interesting plugin, that could be what I’m looking for.

Best regards

Neill W

[Barry]

Hi Neill,

On the search side of things I imagine there are quite a few options out there – the official plugin directory could again be a good place to begin searching – and there may be other options made available by commercial vendors, too.

I hope that helps – and good luck with the project 🙂

[Support Droid]

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