Way to auto post to Facebook once event is posted to WP site?

[Cat]

I see that Facebook events can import onto the site via one of your products- is there a way to do it the other way around? Add an event on the WordPress site and then it automatically posts to Facebook once published?

Thank you.

Cat

[Geoff]

Hi Cat,

Good question! Our Facebook Events plugin will bring events from Facebook into WordPress but not the other way around.

There are a number of third-party plugins that do share WordPress posts to Facebook. The key is to find one that support custom post types, which is what events are. This one, for example, might be worth looking at.

Does this help? Will this work for you? Please let me know. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[Cat]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks so much for this information. That is helpful. The plug in looks a little complicated – as far as what you have to do to set it up. May still use it but another question and this may be elsewhere here but I do not recall seeing it: Are the events shareable as in if a Social Media plug in is enabled for posts and pages, will that extend to the Events? I assume yes but just wanted to check.

Many thanks —

[Geoff]

Hi Cat, thanks for following up!

If Facebook Events looks complicated to set up, that’s a failure on our part. It’s actually fairly simple, considering what it does and, once it is set up, you don’t have to think about it again since it auto-imports events to your site for you.

Are the events shareable as in if a Social Media plug in is enabled for posts and pages, will that extend to the Events?

Absolutely. Events are an extension of default WordPress Posts, so as long as a plugin (like the one I shared earlier) supports custom post types (which it does), then that will be extendable to Events as well. 🙂

Did you have any other questions that I can help with? Please let me know.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Cat]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks so much for your response. It was not your Facebook Events but it was the Facebook Auto Publish plug-in that you suggested that seemed a bit complicated to set up.

I do have another question. Is it possible to set up the Events Calendar to show as a blog post (sounds like it if it is technically a custom post) with the events in just List view? And also show elsewhere as a full calendar with all versions, month and list, etc.?

Thank you so much.

Cat

[Geoff]

Ah, gotcha! Thanks for clarifying. 🙂

And, yes, there is actually a setting in Events > Settings that does indeed allow you to feed your events into the main WordPress blog feed. In other words, events and posts will display together if that setting is enabled.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Cat]

Thanks, Geoff. Okay, yes that worked. Great. Is there a way to do a shortened version what is in the description on the blog page to then link to the main calendar?

Thank you again.

Cat

[Cat]

Also, it is showing up with the last event first vs. the more recent events building up to the last event.

Is there a way to reverse that?

Cat

[Cat]

New question — if I am trying to have two separate calendars, one for events, one for calendars (which I wrote about in a separate support question), is there a way to have them as two distinct entities so that the events calendar posts go up as a blog post but not the classes? Is there a way to create two distinct calendars somehow?

Thanks again!!

Cat

[Geoff]

Hey Cat!

Is there a way to do a shortened version what is in the description on the blog page to then link to the main calendar?

Yes, you can certainly use the_excerpt() to show just the excerpt of the event. I suspect your main blog loop is using the_content() instead, so you will want to change that in your theme.

Also, it is showing up with the last event first vs. the more recent events building up to the last event. Is there a way to reverse that?

The post order is determined by the Published date instead of the Event date when it’s in the main blog loop. You can change the published date for each post so they display in a different order, or use a filter to do that. For example, here’s a filter than randomizes the events in the main blog loop.

is there a way to have them as two distinct entities so that the events calendar posts go up as a blog post but not the classes? Is there a way to create two distinct calendars somehow?

There is no way to create two calendars. However, each event category has it’s own distinct URL (e.g. [your-site]/events/category/[category-slug]) which allows you to link directly to different filtered variations of the calendar, which is like having multiple calendars on the site.

To show some categories and not others in the blog feed, you could use another filter like the one before so that it excludes a specific category.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Cat]

Hi Geoff, very helpful. Thank you. I see what you mean about blog excerpt vs. full length. Okay, fixed that.

I am a little unsure about setting up the filter and what code exactly to put there in both instances and where the code goes. I assume that link (above) is not specific to my query — what is the best way to figure it out?

Thank you!!

Cat

[Geoff]

Hi Cat,

So glad this has helped so far!

That snippet I linked to would go in your functions.php file and is just an example of how to filters could work to manipulate your blog feed.

I think we’re starting to veer away from Pre-Sales questions and more into technical support, so please feel free to post any other technical questions you have in our WordPress.org support forum, or open a new thread here on this site if you have a premium license for one of our products and we’d be happy to help you there. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[Melissa]

Hi, I see! Thanks!! You have been so helpful. I have the EDD tickets. Can I ask this question on this site and if so under which category in the support forum? We will probably get the PRO but do not have it right now.

Thank you!!

Cat

ps just switched accounts and logged in. thanks!

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by Melissa.

[Geoff]

Heck yeah, so glad you have EDD Tickets!

Yeah, you can absolutely ask that question here in the premium forums and file it under The Events Calendar PRO. We’ll see you there. 🙂

Geoff

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