Throughout my time with WordPress, I have not found a good calendar/events plugin, but Events Calendar Pro (available here) changes that. It’s been the only solution I’ve found that covered everything you’d expect in a full calendar and events list. In the plugin creator’s own words:
The Events Calendar Premium plugin for WordPress enables you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation. Check out the full screencast here.
I purchased and rolled out the plugin onto a new site only to find out that Events Calendar Pro doesn’t work well with Thesis. However, Events Calendar Pro provides an easy way to template the plugin without touching any core files. So after some hacking and messing around, I’ve came up with a working template for Thesis.
Download the fix below and move the downloaded folder into your installed Thesis folder. Obviously you will need to already have Events Calendar Pro installed in order for the template files to do anything.
Note: I’ve tested the files with both Thesis 1.7 and Thesis 1.8b2 so far. Let me know if anyone sees any issues.
I'm a freelance web designer working out of 
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this Matt,
I’ve been working on this for a while and couldn’t get it right.
I’ve been using a combined format stemming from this post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-the-events-calendar-does-not-look-great?replies=9#post-1614074
I installed yours but found that the main events screen became blank – not a think on it. Tried uninstalling, deactivating, reactivating, reinstalling and so on – to no avail.
So finally used the grid-view.php and list.php versions I had previously but used your single.php.
Now having it working pretty much how I want. You can see at: http://gibc.biz/events/
All just fyi.
Not looking forward to figuring out how to fix problems in the next upgrade.
Cheers
Kieren
Yeah, I figured everything would work out of box for Thesis but was surprised to find out it didn’t really work at all. The template system should be fine for updates as long as you didn’t overwrite the original plugin files.
I’m not sure why the other files didn’t work for you though, they are working great for me. Anyways, thanks for the feedback and best of luck with it.
Still having trouble using the plugin with thesis. Can you provide me with a step by step install of how to upload, etc, your fix once i’ve downloaded it? do i need to unzip it? how do i access changes? Sorry, but I’m not a techie and trying to do this on the fly.
You need to unzip the folder somewhere on your local machine.
Then FTP to your site server (using a program like Fetch or FileZilla) and find your Thesis theme folder (usually in wp-content/themes/thesis).
Then move the folder you already unzipped over to the Thesis folder.
And that should be it really. Hope it helps.
Thanks, Matt. Looking better already. Now…thesis doesn’t support the menu option that they use in the tutorial. How do I use what you gave me to create a master events page where there is a list or grid?
aha! just discovered the calendar of events page, but…how do i get it to show up in my nav menu? there must be a way
Couple of ways to put an item in your navigation:
1. Use the new Thesis 1.8 (currently in beta, but seems solid) and use the WP3 menus.
2. Create a new Wordpress page and use the 301 redirect link (located further down the page) in Thesis to redirect to the calendars page.
I love being part of the wordpress community. Its what makes being involved in open source (and now premium plugins) so rewarding. Matt, mad props dude.
Thanks for sharing!!
Ok, Matt, I’m getting there. I used the 301 redirect and it seems to be working nicely.
three more questions and hopefully that should be it.
1)The list version works, but when you click to the Month/Calendar version, I get nothing but a bar across the page.
2) Secondly, the events in the list form are in reverse order of what I put them in. Is there a way to make them show in straight chronological order?
3) The calendar pages are just my skin without the sidebars. Not a huge issue, but do you know of a way to have it so the sidebars show as well?
Thanks, man. greatly appreciate your help!
Awesome work Matt! We totally support ya on this!
Hi Matt
Thanks for the code. I’m having problems with ECP (1.1.3) on my Thesis 1.7 site. I get this error on the calendar view:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function thesis_header_areacontainer() in /home/manussi1/public_html/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/events/gridview.php on line 11
The list view works on /?post_type=sp_events&eventDisplay=upcoming but gives the same error as above on /?post_type=sp_events
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
I think I missed a character there. I’ve updated the download and replaced a file so just download and copy over them.
Awesome, Matt. Working really well now. Do you know how to invert the order of the items in the list?
Not sure on that one- mine seems to work fine. Might be something you’ll have to troubleshoot with the plugin creators.
That’s fantastic, thanks Matt. It’s working now!
Ok. Just saw you looking at it on my site. there is no setting to change the order. I’ll go check out their forums. Thanks for all your help. Awesome stuff. Really appreciate it!
Hey Matt, thanks for this patch. Have you noticed that your navigation gets wonky when on the Events Pages? It actually changes the multilevel navigation. I can’t really explain, so let me show you:
the way the multilevel nav should function: http://apexmountainschool.com.previewdns.com
the way it functions on the events pages:
http://apexmountainschool.com.previewdns.com/events
notice how the levels get changed on the events page?
Thanks for figuring out this patch.
Rich
Oh, and fair warning clicking on the “home” tab or the logo takes you to the current live site, so you want to avoid clicking those for testing. thanks!
Rich, I’ve updated the download so just copy over your events folder. I think it was just a styling thing so let me know if it fixes it.
yup that worked Matt. Hey I just noticed that the title tag is displaying the URL and not something more valuably descriptive. Is that something we can control, or at the mercy of the plugin?
Thanks again, for everything!
Rich
Hi Matt
The new version worked a treat to solve a few problems I’ve been having. Two things seem to be broken and I’m wondering if you have any ideas how to fix them:
1) the calendar tooltips are not showing problem on Internet Explorer 8 (fine on chrome & firefox) . The tooltip does not overlay fully. For an example view http://www.manussinistra.org/events/2010-10 in IE
2) the new version of your template breaks the thumbsexcerpts plugin I had been using to add thumbnails to the events list view. To get around this I am using the old version of list.php – see http://www.manussinistra.org/events
Hope you can help!
Thanks
Matt,
Great piece of work. I’m running it using Thesis 1.8 and have noticed a few issues in all versions of IE.
1. Using the Events Calendar widget cause the calendar grid to blow out the right side of the page. You can see this at http://ayso1c.org/site/
2. When viewing the main calendar page, the page to be left aligned instead of center aligned
3. On the calendar view, the “Calendar of Events” heading and the month and year navigation are aligned on top of one another. Also the “Event List” and “Calendar” buttons are mis-aligned.
4. When opening an event page that contains a Google map, the map extends off the right side of the page.
Sounds like CSS issues. Sure hope we can get these fixed.
Thanks.
Al
Have you found a fix for these IE problems – I’ve installed everything and all is working great on Firefox, Safari (Yay!) but is having the same problems you experienced, Al. Can anyone let me know if you’ve discovered fixes for IE? Thanks!
I’m having the same problems with the calendar in IE. It appears that all the spacing above the days of the week are out of alignment on IE only. The words are overlapping – looks like a spacing issue. I create many client websites using Thesis and the Event Pro Calendar along with your patch (which I really appreciate). But I may need to abandon the solution if I can’t get a fix soon… Please reply!
Matt – Thank you SO much for the Thesis Calendar Fix!! Worked wonderful – can’t thank you enough for posting this!!!
Mr. Hodder, you are a great American hero. This fix saved my life. Where’s the “Buy Me a Cup of Coffee” button on your site??
Thanks Matt for your coding and help!
Question: It seems that I need to add a new event using the Event panel rather than the Posts panel. That’s fine, but is there a way to make the new event shows up in the regular Posts loop as well as in the Events calendar/listing? I’m working on a site for a consultant who blogs about his upcoming speaking events, so I want him to be able to enter the information in one place and have it appear in the regular chronological display of posts as well as in the events calendar/listings that appear in the main content areas when you click on the sidebar widgets.
Also, right now I’m getting just a single-month calendar in the sidebar widget with no buttons for “next month,” “previous month.” Is there a way to initially display 3 months and add the buttons for cycling through the year?
Thank you, and other community members, for any assistance you can provide.
Have you figured out a way for it to call the sidebar in Thesis? I’m trying to get it to show, but don’t want to mess it up.
Hi Matt,
For some reason it didnt work the first time I tried it, but then I deleted the files, copied them again and refreshed the browser and now its works.
Many thanks.
The download doesn’t work
Work’s fine here.
All pages dont work. Does or have anybody else had this problem? I added everything like it was stated. Any help appreciated.
Hey Matt:
The Calendar program works very well. I like that it posts on to the Home page the events lists without having another plugin to handle that.
I have one issue: The title of the calendar is “behind” the Date Range selection. This means the Month and Year boxes are on top of the words Calendar of Events.
Any ideas on how to fix that?
Wordpress 3.0.1
Thesis Them 1.8
The last events calendar I used was temperamental, so I can’t wait to try this one out.
This was a very helpful, thank you!
Since Shane is out and there is no support til he recovers and whatever that whole code canyon support thing is about I dunno.
So, Did I miss something? In the free version of ECP The Event Calendar, the event admin is separate from the post so now one cannot designate an event as a post?
Where is access to all the templates?
Despite reading your comment above, Still figuring out how to get ECP Events to appear in the nav menu instead of the category Events Created for the free version.
wp 305/thesis 18
Unfortunately I don’t know anything about the free version. This is about the Pro version as listed on Code Canyon.
CLARIFICATION, free version let you designate post as also an event. In ECP it is separate. I would like for events to appear as posts as well as in the events page and sidebar widget.
OK, I got things tucked away as best I can and it works great, thanks. Where can I contribute?
At http://www.halfwaytoconcord.com
on the front page I am running the Featured Event in the front page sidebar. The copy is butt up against the image selected. How can I add some padding to the image?
Hey BGR – I’m using the free version too and having trouble getting things working.
Any chance you could share your code?
Cheers,
Tim
Hi Matt, sorry to bother you with this, but nobody can help me in thesis forum.
When I visit the page where the calendar is hosted its navbar item isn’t highlighted. I suppose the problem is related to the particular structure of this plugin’s permalinks.
Is there something that can be done?
I forgot something: is it possible to assign different colors to different categories in the calendar?
Hey, we are having the same issue. Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem?
Hey Matt,
I am using the Events Calendar Pro version and downloaded your folder and placed it in the Thesis main folder. Things work great in the dashboard and all. However, on the site, I cannot seem to navigate around the calendar. If I click buttons relating to List, Calendar, or Back to Events then the page gives me a 404, file not found, from the host server.
I am using Mega Hosters, Wordpress 3.1.1, Thesis 1.8, and the latest edition of Events Calendar Pro.
Any advise greatly appreciated.
Best,
Josh
I figured out it was a URL issue, but I do not know how to solve it. When I click on the nav menu, it brings me to
wordpress/index.php/events.
However, if I click buttons on the Calendar button, for example, I am then directed to
wordpress/events/month/
If I insert the index.php language after the wordpress/ then it works. How can I get this URL linking fixed?
Thanks!
Josh
Awesome fix — thank you! I second the need for adding sidebars. Willing to pay for it…
Hi Matt – thanks for this, very helpful! I was wondering – have you ever experienced an issue with all events displaying the date as January 1, 1970? I’ve ran this by the guys at Make Design Not War and they suggested I check out my thesis them. I’m just looking for somewhere to start troubleshooting.
Thanks!
Thanks much for the fix Matt.
(I had to add the line “global spEvents;” at the top in all the php files).
Also, now this can also be done via Thesis’ Custom Loop API (http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/custom-loop-api/).
Basically, I copied the rendering code from single.php, list.php and gridview.php into a cutom_functions.php:
eventCategory())) {
tec_single();
}
else {
thesis_loop::single();
}
}
function category() {
global $spEvents;
if (is_category($spEvents->eventCategory())) {
if (events_displaying_upcoming() || events_displaying_past()) {
tec_list();
}
else {
tec_gridview();
}
}
else {
thesis_loop::category();
}
}
}
function tec_single() {
?>
... code removed for clarity. This code is copied from single.php ...
... code removed for clarity. This code is copied from list.php ...
... code removed for clarity. This code is copied from gridview.php ...
<?php }
And replaced all the code in list.php, single.php, gridview.php with this:
<?php
thesis_html_framework();
Oops. Looks like the Comments field cannot handle copy/pasted code. My previous comments looks all messed up.
Anyone find a way of adding sidebars to the single.php … I’ve tried using the thesis hooks but then widgets keep showing up above or below the post instead of inthe sidebar.
I still have not been able to make headway on why a POST should have any date showing at all. I have dates for post shut down in thesis
I did determine that somehow Calendar Pro is seeing all POSTS as EVENTS that need a start date as well as an end date. When I deactivate Calendar Pro all Posts as well as events disappear. I determined this as a series of trying to post with Calendar Pro deactivated and Thesis operational and posts don’t have that d1970 date . Re activate and the post made without Calendar Pro gets the date assigned. ARGGH
I have been looking At the pointers and the SQL database and have not found the point that must be a null date/time entry which would give that date as a reversion to an empty date field but so far no luck. I, perhaps, am chasing a ghost looking there but one never knows.
My question is Does Calendar Pro make a distinction between a POST and an EVENT and should I some how make a class called event in thesis separate from events?
maybe its operator error on my part as I am a bit new to WP, Thesis and calendar Pro. Stiff learning curves tend to cause errors too.
I did put the code from here into the widget load and that took care of so many issues. THANKS! now the calendar view is every thing I had hoped for as well as the events view.
I still can not get the 1970 date on posts to go away.
Help?
Never used this plugin before, but I plan on purchasing the new version coming out in a few days. I would love to get some confirmation from some brave soul before I fork over my money that this fix will still be effective with the new version of ECP and Thesis 1.82.
Thanks,
Sel
Hi Sel –
I just did it and it works fine. When you un-zip, you’ll have an “events” folder inside the “ecp-thesis” folder. Put the events folder in your thesis_182 folder and you’ll be good to go.
THANKS, MATT!
Using Thesis_18 but when I upload events folder (which I added inside thesis_18 folder) it blows out the page and replicates content. Should the files be uploaded at the same level, without folder? I’m afraid to try.
{ 1 trackback }