The Events Calendar 3.0 Preview: Updated “General” Settings Tab

We’re shifting gears a bit in today’s videos. All of our previews for The Events Calendar / Events Calendar PRO 3.0 so far have focused on frontend views and how users can engage with them. Today’s begins a brief series that stays mostly behind the scenes, addressing the updated Settings panel in 3.0.

The 2-part series below focuses on the most meaty of those Settings tabs: the General tab. There will be some overlap here for anyone familiar with the 2.x release; certain settings are definitely being carried over from 2.x to 3.0, but we’ve also added a few new ones that you might find interesting. You may want to give it a look regardless of whether you’re a new or existing user. Check the videos out after the jump.

Part 1

Part 2

Let’s recap what each of these settings does, shall we? From the top:

General Settings

  • Number of events to show per page lets you decide how many events to show per events page. If it’s set to 10, for example, that means when someone lands at /events, if they’re viewing list view they’re going to see the next 10 events, followed by a “Next Events” link to go check out page 2 (which will also show 10 events, and so on and so forth).
  • Live updated AJAX is a new feature for 3.0. It enables automatic filtering on the frontend, which means if someone changes the date in the Events bar or applies a filter using our add-on Filters panel, the page refreshes automatically. Without live AJAX enabled, users must select a submit/filter button to trigger the search.
  • Recurring event instances lets the site admin decide for the whole site: do I want to only show the first upcoming instance of a recurrence pattern, or the entire pattern? This takes away choice from your users. Whatever you set, applies across the board.
  • Front-end recurring event instances toggle gives a bit more flexibility than the Recurring event instances setting covered above. When enabled, this offers a frontend setting for users to decide whether they want to show an entire recurrence pattern or just the next event in that series.
  • Show comments enables comments on individual events.
  • Include events as posts in the main blog loop? is a setting that, when activated, puts your events into the main blog loop on the site. If my site is http://tri.be/, for example, my events by default would live at tri.be/events. But with this setting enabled, users would be able to go to the main blog loop on the home page — dropping /events from the URL — and see event content mixed in with regular posts. (Long-time users will know this is how our ancient plugin The Events Calendar 1.6.x operated).
  • Events URL slug dictates where the calendar lives on the frontend. It defaults to /events, but you can change it at any time (though note this setting has no effect when pretty permalinks are disabled).
  • Single event URL slug shows the slug for an individual event. If your events slug is /events and your event slug is /event, for example, an individual event will live at http://siteurl.com/event/event-title/
  • Multiday event cutoff is used most commonly on events taking place late into the early hours of the morning. Got a party running from Friday night through Saturday at 3 a.m.? While we all know that’s really a one-day event — a Friday event — the plugin doesn’t, and will show it on both Friday AND Saturday unless you enable this setting.
  • Default currency symbol is the default symbol that appears in cost-related events fields. It defaults to “$”, but international users may change it at any time.

Map Settings

  • Enable Google Maps turns on maps, at both an event and venue level.
  • Map view search distance limit dictates how far your search range goes when running a geo search. Setting it at 25 miles, for example, brings in all events within 25 miles of the city/locale searched for in the Events bar or Filters panel.
  • Map view distance unit lets you switch between miles and kilometers with regards to frontend distance labels.
  • Google Maps Default Zoom Level sets the level of zoom for Google Maps across all  your events. We default to about halfway (10), but you can zoom as far in or as far out as Google’s API allows. Just remember that this applies to all event maps across the board, so make sure you pick a setting you’re comfortable having applied plugin-wide.

Miscellaneous Settings

  • Duplicate Venues & Organizers gives you the ability to clear up any duplicate venues or organizers. If you’re making the jump from a pre-3.0 release, you’re probably going to have duplicates. It’s OK…you can relax. Just run the tool provided here to clean up those duplicates and make your venue/organizer lists more manageable. 
  • Send PressTrends data sends your data to PressTrends, so we can internally track what themes are being used, what versions of the plugin our community members rely on, how many people are updating, etc. These aren’t for public consumption but help us internally decide where to focus our support and development resources.
  • Debug mode lets you keep track of debug warnings. You probably wouldn’t want to enable this unless you’re a developer.

Thanks for sticking around a bit longer than usual to watch both of these videos; hopefully, you’ve now got a better picture of what’s in store under the hood. We’ll be following up in the next video with an overview of some more settings. And if you haven’t checked out our broader Events 3.0 preview page and video, you should definitely check it out.