what determines that events are related?

[Robert Trevellyan]

I have events set up in different categories, with no tags set, and they are being displayed in each other’s related events area. The only thing they have in common is the venue. Is this what makes them show up as related?

I also noticed that related events are sometimes not shown in date order. Is this expected behavior? It looks very odd when the related events are multiple instances of a single recurring event.

[psoastats]

I too have these same questions.
Thanks 🙂

[psoastats]

It appears that the “related” events are actually just the next events chronologically in one’s calendar. At least that’s how my “related events” are displaying.

[Robert Trevellyan]

My related events are not simply the next events chronologically. I have two categories, and when I click on an event in either category, only events from the other category are shown as related. The only thing they have in common is the venue.

[Leah]

Hi folks,

The Related Events are based mainly on Category and Tags. If you think you’re seeing incorrect behavior, feel free to submit a (detailed) example and we can look into it.

Best,
Leah

[Robert Trevellyan]

Hi Leah,

Please clarify what additional details you need beyond what I have provided.

Thanks.

[Leah]

Hi trevellyan,

So neither of those events have tags in common? Some screenshots of both the event details and related events listed with them would be great.

Thanks!
Leah

[Robert Trevellyan]

That’s correct, there are no tags in common. In fact there are no tags set on any events.
You can find screenshots here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sy094xt9xfh22aw/w-eDre6TtE
If you’d like to see the live site I can give you a Subscriber login.

[Leah]

That is very strange travellyan. Can you please send login creds to pro (at) tri.be so I can take a look at this? Thanks!

Leah

[Robert Trevellyan]

You should have received email with your login details.

Thanks.

[Leah]

Hi trevellyan,

Thanks for sending those along. This issue for you is that you actually only have two events on your site- the Planning Board Meeting and the Board of Trustees Meeting. They are both recurring events with multiple instances, but they act as the same event. Recurring Events don’t relate to other instances of themselves, since then Recurring Events would never relate to anything but themselves. Essentially, on your site the Related Events feature only has one other option, so it lists the other meetings instances. Does that make sense?

The Related Events feature is probably more relevant on a site with more events. And the above behavior is designed for that sort of thing, since most calendars have a lot of different events. We are considering making a setting to turn Related Events off. If you’re interested, you can vote for that on our UserVoice forum.

Thanks for your patience while I looked into this.

Best,
Leah

[Robert Trevellyan]

If I understand correctly, what you’re saying is that the Related Events feature is compelled to show something, regardless of how weak the relationship might be.
If so, regardless of whether there’s a setting to turn off Related Events, my request would be for clear documentation of how it determines whether events are related, and for it to be willing to show nothing if there is no sufficiently strong relationship. Even better would be a group of settings to determine which criteria were used to determine relationships.

[Leah]

Hi trevellyan,

That’s correct. On the majority of sites, the Related Events feature is more useful because there are many events that share tags and categories. The feature prioritizes events that share both, followed by shared tags and shared categories. Only then will it feature a random event.

my request would be for clear documentation of how it determines whether events are related, and for it to be willing to show nothing if there is no sufficiently strong relationship.

You can find documentation for Related Events on our docs site. Hopefully that will get you started if you want to customize the feature. We made it always show three to avoid instances where only 1 or 2 related events would look unbalanced, but I definitely see your point.

Even better would be a group of settings to determine which criteria were used to determine relationships.

That would be very cool. But it would also be pretty complicated, so it’s not something we’d be adding anytime soon.

I’m sorry I don’t have a perfect answer for you here. I hope the above will help you get the Related Events functioning nicely for your site. If you want to get into customizing them and need further help, please start a new thread and we’ll do our best to help out.

Cheers,
Leah

[Robert Trevellyan]

Hi Leah,

Thanks for the explanation of how related events are prioritized. I guess what I want at minimum is a check box where I can turn off the “Only then will it feature a random event” stage, so that if there are no shared tags or categories, nothing is shown. It seems a bit odd to indicate that events are related based on a random selection.

As far as the documentation goes, it looks like the important function is TribeRelatedEvents::getEvents, but I can’t find the definition of that function or any other information about it. I see there’s a filter I can apply, but without more information it will be quite a challenge to modify the existing behavior.

[Robert Trevellyan]

I guess TribeRelatedEvents::getEvents is a red herring. I found tribe_single_related_events, which has a parameter of only_display_related, which defaults to true and is passed through to tribe_get_related_posts (where it defaults to false) and thence to TribeRelatedPosts::getPosts (where it defaults to false):
@param bool $only_display_related Should we show only related events if we don’t find $count number of related ones?

And yet, unrelated events are being displayed.

[Author]

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