Upcoming List by Category & Summary on List only

[Sheila]

Newbie (designer not coder) questions…I’ve tried searching.

We’re not going to use the calendar in grid format at all. We want to have the Upcoming Events in List View BY CATEGORY. The idea being that all the events in a category will be able to be displayed in List View on a page dedicated to that category, then other pages for other categories. I know I can use the widget and select by category but I’m not seeing how to make pages display by category.

ALSO, on the List View page we like seeing the summary sidebar. Is there a way to have it there but NOT on the full single-event page?

Site under development is http://www.amanda.hoffmangraphics.com. The homepage uses the widget for upcoming events by category in the sidebar. And this is the direct to the Events List View: http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/upcoming

We’re hoping to be able to have all the horse workshops show up on a workshop page under horses and all the leadership workshops show up on that page in that section, etc.

POSSIBLE? HOW?
Thanks!
Sheila

[Jonah]

Hi Sheila, having separate category lists is totally possible but it’s going to require some coding knowledge/finagling so you may want to hire a developer to help you with this. There’s a couple ways to do it but probably the easiest is to use the existing functionality in the plugin to list events in specific categories. You can access any of your categories by visiting: http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/upcoming/category/your_category_slug/. You can then link to any of these by creating custom menu links (if you have custom menus available) to link to these categories.

Another way to do it would to setup these different pages (as many as you need) and put some custom loops in there to pull in your category specific events. But that would be a lot more complicated.

I’m not sure what you mean by the summary sidebar. Do you mean the start/end/venue/address info on the right of each event?

Does that help on the category list idea?

[Sheila]

Thanks so much Jonah. Believe it or not that MAY be enough for me to figure this out. I’m using Headway and I know how to pull in categories using it. So I’ll give it a try. Thanks.

And yes, I mean the start/end/venue/address. It looks great and makes sense in the listing view with excerpts but seems unnecessary and bulky in the full page view.

[Jonah]

You’re welcome Sheila. Hopefully that’s enough for you to work with but let me know if you need any more insight into it.

To get rid of the summary sidebar on single events you can remove all the code for it by first making a duplicate copy of /wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/views/single.php in an ‘events’ folder in your theme folder. Then open up the file in your editor of choice and remove lines 15-88. If you want to remove other pieces; they’re all there in single.php and you can just remove chunks, test it out and if it works it works and if it doesn’t just undo your edits and try again!

[Sheila]

Thanks again. I’ve just not been finding this very intuitive. And the FAQ & Docs are all either too basic or too advanced! You’ve provided exactly what I needed. I’ll post back after I’d worked with this with any other questions and or my success story!

[Rob]

Thanks Sheila. We are adjusting the FAQ a bit right now and beefing up the docs (though the latter is more a long-term effort); so hopefully when all is said and done, these will be both organized in a fashion and full of information such that that they’re more useful.

[Sheila]

Hmmm… When I go to these category links they render the same results (ie: ALL events are displayed) rather than just the single category. Why would that be? They are each only in ONE category.

http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/upcoming/category/leadership-with-horses
http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/upcoming/category/speaking

Am I missing something?

I was hoping it would be just that easy! Then when it wasn’t I thought in Headway I’d be able to easily do a specific query however it only shows regular categories and not the ECP CPT as an option. I do get the option to choose a post type but when I choose Events I still have no way to specify one category.

THEN I thought I’d explore LoopBuddy which I’ve never used before (but I own a dev license). That’s a whole new learning curve and I’m not even sure it would pay off so I quickly abandoned it.

[Jonah]

Hi Sheila, those category links should be working for you unless there’s a conflict somewhere. It could be a conflict with another plugin or with Headway. I know there have been other issues with getting our plugin to work with Headway… Have you tried disabling other plugins to try and find a conflict? Maybe also try flushing your permalinks by visiting Settings > Permalinks (they will be flushed just by visiting that settings page).

Another option is still creating specific pages for your categories and then creating custom loops for each category but this is more messy. Does Headway provide any options for custom loops on a page? Otherwise you’ll need to create the pages for each category you want and then plug in some custom event category loops conditionally for each page.

Let me know what you’d like to do or need help with.

[Sheila]

Thanks Jonah. I just cleared the permalinks and then deactivated everything except ECP and those links still don’t work. Too bad. That would solve my issues in a very clean/simple way.

I don’t think HT has custom loops built it. They recommend Loop Buddy but as I said, that put me in total overwhelm! I have a local pal who’ll help me with custom coding if I pay him. I was hoping this would be more straight forward. I don’t want to pay someone if I can do it myself! I’ll see if anyone at HT has any clues too. Thanks again.

[Jonah]

Yeah it’s strange that those category pages are not working. They should out of the box and they do for me in my test site running 2.0.4. You do have the latest version of the plugin installed (both base and PRO) right? And, your event page slug is set to ‘trainings’ correct (this is set in Settings > The Events Calendar)?

[Sheila]

Yup…I have Version 2.0.4 for both. I’m running the Beta of the Eventbrite add-on but turning all my plug-ins off including that one didn’t help. Yup, event slug is “trainings” and “training” in Settings.

[Rob]

Sheila: are you sure you’re using the tagged 2.0.4 code, rather than one of the betas provided alongside the Eventbrite code?

[Sheila]

Good point Rob! I am using the versions provided with EB beta. I didn’t realize there was a difference! So now what? If I disable these and reinstall the live ones you think it’ll work? Then my EB beta won’t work? Hmmm….Still working on figuring out the EB piece on this project anyhow.

[Rob]

Hey Sheila. It should, yes; update to the official 2.0.4 for both The Events Calendar and PRO, then try Jonah’s suggestions again. It ought to do the trick…though let us know if not.

[Sheila]

AH HA! I think I’ve figured out the problem. I’ve been working with the url pattern Jonah provided above. I appears it just needed the word UPCOMING removed and now it’s working! It’s messy looking, but working now… So hopefully I can clean it up and go from there….

http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/category/leadership-with-horses
http://amanda.hoffmangraphics.com/trainings/category/speaking

Thanks!
Sheila

[Author]

Posts