The Events Calendar 5.0: Frequently Asked Questions
We recently shipped version 5.0 of The Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro. These new versions feature calendar views that have been redesigned from the ground-up, including the premium views available in Events Calendar Pro.
This is a big change, so we’ve made the upgrade to views opt-in only. This means, at this time you can safely update your plugin and won’t be forced to use the updated calendar design.
Any time there’s a major change like this, we try our best to make everyone aware of what’s coming. If you haven’t seen the updates, you can read up on what’s new and how to upgrade to the new views:
- The Events Calendar 5 Release Notes
- Events Calendar Pro 5 Release Notes
- Filter Bar 4.9 Release Notes
In addition to the updates, we’ve been getting great questions from customers about what happens after they opt in to the new designs. We thought we’d share them with you here along with our answers.
What happens to my customizations?
They’re still in place! You won’t see them, however, because the re-designed views rely on an entirely new set of templates. If your calendar relies on a bunch of customizations and the updated views aren’t fully compatible, you can opt-out and revert to the previous design, or translate your customizations to the new template override structure.
Why am I getting a “Page Not Found” error when clicking my calendar links?
The short answer is that we put some new redirects in place for the new views in Events Calendar Pro 5.0.0.2. If you’re getting a Page Not Found (404) error, head over to Settings → Permalinks from the WordPress dashboard and try simply clicking the “Save Changes” button — yes, even though you’re not making any changes. This will “flush” the permalinks (by triggering `flush_rewrite_rules`) on your site to update the URL rewrite rules.
That should do the trick but, if it doesn’t, we have a couple of other methods to try next.
How long will you support the legacy view styles?
We’re currently planning to maintain support for the previous designs for 9-12 months (until Fall 2020 or so). We’re doing that to give everyone plenty of time to prepare and transition their sites. That said, any new work we do on the calendar will be focused around the updated designs.
You’re totally free to keep using the previous views, even when updating to version 5. Go to Events → Settings → Display and uncheck the “Enable updated designs for all calendar views” option.
How do I switch back to the legacy view styles?
You can switch back to the previous calendar designs anytime! Make your way over to Events → Settings → Display and uncheck the “Enable updated designs for all calendar views” option.
And, of course, you can always re-activate the new calendar designs using the same setting.
Can I still use the WordPress Customizer to make styling changes?
If you were using the WordPress Customizer previously to tweak the legacy views, those settings will not impact the views once you’ve updated to the new designs. While there are a few things you can adjust in the new designs with the Customizer, keep an eye out for more options for the updated views in future updates!
I was using one of your calendar extensions and it stopped working. What should I do?
Please let us know! Many of our extensions were made to work with the legacy views code, so they won’t work on calendars using the updated styles. We plan to update or replace our top extensions to work with the updated view designs, so it’s helpful for customers to report which ones are not compatible.
While we can’t guarantee that we will be able to update every extension, we at least want to know which ones need some care.
How can I customize the new views?
We’re working on new versions of our customization resources that will provide step-by-step instructions and examples of how to modify the look and functionality of the calendar. It’s largely going to follow the same pattern that The Events Calendar has always used, which involves overriding view templates and styles with custom files in your theme. The difference will be where those overrides specifically go.
In the meantime, we’ve created a few new resources for customizing the new views:
- Using Filters and Actions
- Customizing Mobile Styles
- Display Custom Fields in the Month View Tooltip
- Customizing Photo View
- Show Events Based on Custom Fields
Have questions that are not covered here? Let us know by reaching out to our support team.