Simple Calendar 3.0 beta now available

I am an early adopter so do I just deactivate/delete version 2.3.2 and then install version 3.0.x? I am installing this on my workstation WP instance.

Hi there, thanks for trying out the new version

You can deactivate the plugin and overwrite files (perhaps clear out directory first, so you won’t have no longer used files around). Copy the contents of the zip file in the old folder.

The plugin has an update script, so it should pick up your old feeds and pertinent settings. If by any chance you have important data even on your local/staging instance, please do a backup.

You’ll notice a few things changed. But that’s why we are going step by step in order to pick up any problem before releasing the plugin into the wild on www.remarpro.com.

Apart from improved UI and settings, things that have changed the way are handled are widgets and shortcodes. They are somewhat simplified since the old widget had very confusing and overlapping settings with the ‘feed’ post type (now ‘calendar’). And shortcodes are generally not very good for performance and many other things.

So, both widget and shortcode now have less settings/attributes (just 1 in fact) and can have just 1 id in the id attribute. Like so: [calendar id="123"] (we also now encourage to use calendar since it’s more intuitive than gcal, although the latter is still supported). But the function to mash calendars together is still there. You can create a new calendar and use ‘Grouped Calendars’ as events source. This also allows for more granular controls.

There’s also a new way to ‘attach’calendars to content without using shortcodes (through a panel that will appear by default on blog posts but from Settings you can select where it appears).

Anyway, the purpose of releasing a beta is also to make sure people will like the new things in the plugin and make tweaks, adjustments or add entire new features before finalising the release.

Installation: All I had to do was to de-activate GCE and then install Simple Calendar in plugins using the provided zip file and it automatically set up the calendar.

Functionality: With this beta version, the previous/next buttons are programmatically inserted above the first calendar event. They end up stacked on top of each other rather than side by side and without a directional arrow – just a button. A feature to suppress previous/next buttons would be great.

I am using my desktop WP instance so if you would like a screen print, please provide an email or other site address to post screen prints.

I have a feeling that perhaps the stylesheets weren’t printed (there are directional arrows eventually)

you can send a screenshots to https://moonstonemediagroup.com/

but please try refresh your browser/site cache first (hit F5 a few times), perhaps it’s picking up old stylesheets

try also to compare with a calendar in shortcode/widget vs calendar in it’s own post view

thank you!

It appears that there is a dependency of the Simple Calendar widget to exist in at least 1 sidebar or footer widget. Once I dragged the Simple Calendar widget onto a Footer Widget, the header and previous/next buttons appeared properly on the page. I am sending screen prints of before/after.

Also, I noticed that the location value displayed on the calendar event shows a Google Map hyperlink with the literal “[location]” rather than the actual physical address as a hyperlink. I believe this is where I wrote my own php code to re-create location with the physical address as a hyperlink – I don’t recall – but it would really help providing an option to either show the actual address location or the literal “[location]” as a hyperlink.

Hi, I’ve just installed 3.0.0-beta1 and the migration have gone well with some exceptions:

My old content in each calendar (former feeds) has gone. So they look “unformated”. This is a big issue if the custom format was complex as mine was.

I’ve been digging in your code to find “content shortcodes”, although some of the old ones seems to work fine. I found them in event-builder.php, line 85.

May be you can add a cheat sheet with the format tags as a last tab under Advance.

[location] and [location-link] show two times:
Format:
[title]
[when]
[location]
[description autolink=true]
[location-link newwindow=true]Map[/location-link]

Result:
Breakbulk Americas 2015
05, October 2015 – 10, October 2015
Houston, Texas, EE. UU. – Houston, Texas, EE. UU.
https://breakbulk.com
Map – Map

And the whole custom CSS has gone! This is a big issue too. In part is because the new classes names, and in part because the custom format has disappeared.

In the positive side, the new interface is a lot of intuitive and pretty nice and clear.

I keep testing. Good work!!!

Hi Paulo,

thank you very much for trying out the plugin

the idea is to slowly move away from those ‘tags’ (the shortcodes in the WordPress editor currently used for templating an event). The plan is to have a sort of WYSIWYG builder (like form builders) so one doesn’t have to manage those tag or remember them (they’re also not very good in terms of performance and many other things). Maybe for 3.1 or 3.2. There would be support also for theme templates if one doesn’t want to use that (this would also allow better html handling). But yes, in the meanwhile, we will put a list of the available tags on the site. Most have not changed since 2.x, there’s just a couple introduced.

Likewise, the problem of the custom CSS. If you were hacking the plugin CSS, this is usually not very portable. The markup and the css of the calendars is changed. But it’s very hard to do any innovation there without touching the calendars. Best would be to let the default calendar adapt on the current theme or modify higher level selectors (HTML elements instead of targeting specific classes; e.g. .your-theme-calendar-container ul li or something). Nevertheless, it’s also on the roadmap to allow theme templates for calendars. But also use the WordPress customizer to change a few things without having to touch CSS (maybe for 3.0 we can make it to have at least one light/dark alternative for the default calendar, so the calendar would adapt well on many themes).

But there’s one thing that doesn’t sound right in your report. The old feed contents (the html, text and tags in the post editor) for your feed posts should have stayed there. But it didn’t? Instead you found the default one? Blank content? Also, the map link didn’t show right?

thanks!

Hi Fulvio, the content was empty in my existing feeds, but there have been a bad interaction with my own custom (pre)content filter, as the calendar qtips shown my own custom template for new posts (post-type post). The site where I’m testing is pretty complex with more than three custom post types and a lot of customization. My fault probably, I’m checking this. The new created calendars shown fine, with your default content.

The WYSIWYG builder is a great idea, though I’ll prefer custom templates.

Any tip regarding why location and map appear twice? The map link was fine (too times, but fine), I just didn’t copy it to my previous post.

Thanks for your efforts.

Hi Paulo,

could you post here your pre content filter callback? So I get an idea about what you were doing

I think I got an idea why the location was printing twice and probably I’ve fixed it but didn’t update the beta yet, I’ll pack together more things first, for the second round

Cheers

For sure:

add_filter( 'default_content', 'xx_editor_content', 10, 2 );
function xx_editor_content( $content, $post ) {

  if( 'post' != $post->post_type ){
    return $content;
  }

  $content = '<h3 class="subtitulo">El subtítulo</h3>'. "\n";
  $content .= '<!--more-->';
  $content .= '<p>The article body.</p>';

  return $content;
}

I posted a possible bug using the Appearance/Span option on GitHub

I’ve updated the beta file https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7pxhmwo905kdtb/simple-calendar-3.0.0-beta1.zip?dl=1 you can try and see if it improves (warning, still a beta)

Hello there,

I have installed and tried the beta. Great work. 2 things though:

1. the html option in the shortcodes doesn’t seem to work anymore… is that correct? If so do you plan to reactivate it?

2. is it possible to have a weekly display for the grid instead of a monthly view?

Thanks

Hi,

Will the new version allow the grid calendar list out each of the events in the grid itself (like The Events Calendar plug-in does)? I think that would be a great addition. It would be an great alternative over having to use the list view right next to the grid view calendar.

Another suggestion I have is being able to color code the different events like on google calendar when being used in a browser. That would be a really great feature also.

I hope my suggestions help! Great work on a great product!