Next first Friday of the month?

Hello @wiverton,

The [wpdts] shortcode cannot be a solution in this special case because it does not support conditions, so you need custom code.

Please place the following custom code in your child’s theme functions.php file and then use the shortcode [wpdts-monthly-meeting]:

add_shortcode( 'wpdts-monthly-meeting', 'wpdts_monthly_meeting' );
function wpdts_monthly_meeting() {
    // Monthly event's day of week and time.
    $meeting_day_of_week = "Friday";
    $meeting_time = "18:00";
    // The current timestamp.
    $ts_now = intval( current_time( 'timestamp', false ) ); 
    // The timestamp of the first day of week of this month.
    $ts_this_month_event = strtotime( "first {$meeting_day_of_week} of this month {$meeting_time}", $ts_now );
    if ( $ts_now <= $ts_this_month_event ) {
        // If the event this month has NOT PASSED use the day of week and time timestamp from this month.
        $ts_event = $ts_this_month_event;
    }
    else {
        // If the event this month has PASSED use the day of week and time timestamp from next month.
        $ts_event = strtotime( "first {$meeting_day_of_week} of next month {$meeting_time}", $ts_now );
    }
    // Display the date and time in a chosen format.
    // More about the date and time formatting symbols on:
    // https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php
    return date( "M j, Y G:i", $ts_event );
}

Please let us know if that works for you.

Thank you for the quick response. However, I when I added the new php function in the generally recommended way using the WordPress plugin Code Snippets, it caused my website to crash with the message “There has been a critical error on this website.”, leaving me with no access to the WordPress dashboard. Fortunately, my domain host (GreenGeeks) were able to immediately disable the Code Snippets plugin (along with the supplied function) and the day was saved.

Hello @wiverton,

The code works correctly when placed in the functions.php file of the child theme. There is no way to test how it will work placed via another plugin. You can see it working on a temporary test page under our domain:
https://denra.com/tests/test-monthly-meeting/

Here I am pasting absolutely the same working code which is used for the test page on our website, in case you or I have copied the code in the previous post incorrectly:

add_shortcode( 'wpdts-monthly-meeting', 'wpdts_monthly_meeting' );
function wpdts_monthly_meeting() {
    // Monthly event's day of week and time.
    $meeting_day_of_week = "Friday";
    $meeting_time = "18:00";
    // The current timestamp.
    $ts_now = intval( current_time( 'timestamp', false ) ); 
    // The timestamp of the first Friday of this month.
    $ts_this_month_event = strtotime( "first {$meeting_day_of_week} of this month {$meeting_time}", $ts_now );
    if ( $ts_now <= $ts_this_month_event ) {
        // If the event this moth has NOT PASSED use the day of week and time timestamp from this month.
        $ts_event = $ts_this_month_event;
    }
    else {
        // If the event this moth has PASSED use the day of week and time timestamp from next month.
        $ts_event = strtotime( "first {$meeting_day_of_week} of next month {$meeting_time}", $ts_now );
    }
    // Display the date and time in a chosen format.
    // More about the date and time formatting symbols on:
    // https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php
    return date( "M j, Y G:i", $ts_event );
}

Dear @wiverton,

We are closing this support thread.

Thank you for using WP Date and Time Shortcode.