Changes

This version contains only bug fixes since the last development release 3.2.beta1.

• Fixed processing of $options parameter in ec3_get_calendar() template function.
• Removed unused ActiveXObject emulation. This was causing trouble for other JS, which used the presence of the window.ActiveXObject object as a form of browser detection.
  (Thanks to Helene Zisook Speer for reporting this problem.)
• Fix for months with zero padding.
  (Thanks to Selene Tan for spotting the bug.)
• Suppressed canonical redirection for feeds and any URLs that use ec3 queries.
• Fixed formatting of events in popup. Consistent time format in big calendar.
• Fixed double-encoded HTML entities in calendar tooltips.
• More sophisticated reporting of start and end times for events that straddle midnight.
  (Thanks to Samuel Clemance for reporting all these problems.)
• Don’t bother trying to generate schedule table or iconlets for non-event posts. Removed empty <table> elements that were causing formatting errors for some users.
  (Thanks to Jeff Dodson and Sandra Williams for reporting this bug.)

Bugs Outstanding

1. At least two people have reported incorrect ordering of events that occur on the same day. This only seems to happen on the Big-Calendar.
2. One person has reported a problem with the calendar navigation links, where the “previous months” link has the wrong label, like this…

     <<Jan   January, 2009   Feb>>
     ^^^^^
         wrong - should be "Dec"!
   

I’ve not been able to reproduce either of these problems myself. If you see these things yourself, then please post an example URL – the more reports I get, the more likely I am to be able to see the pattern and solve the problem.

Changes

This version contains only bug fixes since the last development release 3.2.dev-02.

• Much improved query support. Ordering of listings pages is now *much* more sensible. The post numbers reported by archive and category links now match the number of posts that actually appear on those pages.
• New query variable: ec3_listing. Values are:
  events – only show events
  posts – only show posts (not events)
  all – show a mix of posts and events
  disable – turn off EC’s fiddling
• Big Calendars (ta da!)
  Embed a big calendar in a page by adding a tag like [EC3BigCalendar]. You can specify options like this: [EC3BigCalendar:opt=val&opt=val] Supported options are:
  day_length : 1,3,9 letters
  hide_logo : 0,1
  navigation : 0 (above), 1 (below), 2 (off)
  id :
  num_months : 1..n
  show_only_events : 0,1
  The default (with no options set) is equivalent to: [EC3BigCalendar:day_length=9&hide_logo=0&navigation=0&id=ec3_big_cal&num_months=1&show_only_events=1]
• Iconlets (dumb name?)
  This is a new default way to display event times in the post. It’s a lot nicer than the horrid old red boxes. The settings page now allows you to choose between the old and new style – the option is now called “Show times within post content”. We’ve had a lot of people obviously not understand what the old option did, so I’ve reworded it to be clearer. I realise that invalidates lots of translations, but I really think it’s worth it. What’s your opinion?

1. Users with “Author” status can now create events.
   (Thanks to Morten Helmstedt for reporting this problem.)
2. Fixed problems in IE7 with date-chooser on Write Post page.
   (Thanks to Terry Ambrose for reporting this problem).

This release also contains an updated Italian translation, thanks to Lorenzo De Tomasi.

Update

The version number’s been bumped up to 3.1.4, because Terry Ambrose’s bug wasn’t completely fixed in 3.1.3. I’m pretty certain we’ve got it now, though.

template-functions-new.php:

New *new* template functions, and event iterators.

calendar-sidebar.php & ec3.js:

Totally new calendar renderer. Allows multiple calenders per page.

feed-ical.php & feed-ec3xml.php:

These special outputs are now implemented as feeds.

eventCalendar.php:

Improved SQL code. Lists of mixed posts/events should now sort correctly. New query param: ec3_listing=yes|no – allows you to FORCE whether you want to see posts or not.
For example, try:

http://blog/?ec3_before=today&order=asc&ec3_listing=no

http://blog/2008/10?ec3_listing=yes

calendar-big.php:

Experimental, non-working *sketch* of what a big calender renderer might look like.

Um, loads more, I’m sure. Most of the big changes are done now. However I will probably be tweaking the API a bit over the coming week or so. I want the new templates to be as easy to use as possible. They are still a bit clunky. Feedback welcome.

[DOWNLOAD]

(But you should really be using the SVN, if you want to run code this experimental.)

There are those who have designed their own CSS, but none of that work is available to new users. It would be great to get those of you who know CSS to design a new look for the calendar. We could publish the variant style-sheets, by way of example, and to inspire newcomers.

We could even have a competition!

Any takers? (Replies to the mailing list of course.)

Event Calendar is stable software that many thousands of people are already running on their WordPress web-sites.

Database Upgrader

Those upgrading from very old 3.0.x versions of Event Calendar are now automatically taken to an upgrade page, where they can manually correct the assumptions made by the (previously fully automatic) upgrader.

Each event post is listed with two dates:

• The POST DATE (which should always be in the past). Post dates in the future are highlighted in red – correct them or your post will disappear.
• The EVENT DATE, which is the date on which your event takes place. Event dates may be in the past or the future.

If you don’t automatically see the upgrader, you can get to it by navigating to:

http://[BLOG]/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=ec3_admin&ec3_easteregg

…and click on the “Upgrade Event Posts” button.

Also new in this release

• Better integration with the latest WordPress. Cosmetic improvements to the settings and Write Posts pages.
• Fixed incompatibility with tags.
• Fixed incompatibility with WP-Sticky plugin.
• Fixed charset problems in iCalendar feed.
• Upcoming Events list widget now uses date format from WordPress settings.
• New translations:
  ru_RU Russian (by Ivan Matveyev)
  sl_SI Slovenian (by Damjan Gerli)

A big thank you to everyone who has contributed or reported bugs. Thank you also to the many many users of Event Calendar, I very much appreciate all your kind support over the years. If you’d like to show your appreciation, then please go and VOTE FOR US.

I didn’t write Event Calendar from scratch. I started with a plug-in written by someone called “Kitten”, but I quickly got enthusiastic and wrote the AJAX calendar widget, and the iCal feed.

Back in those WordPress 1.2 days, plug-in publicity started and ended with adding a link to your plug-in to the Wiki page. Pretty soon I had hundreds and hundreds of people commenting on my blog, reporting bug, requesting features and asking for support. I was overwhelmed. I started the mailing list to help manage it all. That helped a lot – many people were discouraged by the small effort required to join the list, and just solved their problems on their own (or gave up and looked elsewhere…) Also, the mailing list created a sort of community feeling, where more knowledgeable subscribers would help out newcomers with the simpler questions.

When I upgraded it to WordPress 2, the amount of support queries exploded again, and I just couldn’t cope. Rather than rush around answering the same questions dozens of times, I put lots of effort into documentation and ease-of-use. I was fanatical about resisting feature creep – I wanted a plug-in that most users could just install and use, without having to worry about lots of complicated installation. Darrell Schulte helped enormously, by contributing the WordPress Widget code.

In the last year I’ve been really busy, and hundreds of Event Calendar e-mail just piled up, unread. I was daunted by just the prospect of opening the mailing list folder. But then my wife forced me to upgrade The Raven, and I found to my delight that the mailing list crew had managed to keep Event Calendar working, without needing my constant presence.

Purely by chance just a week later, Rick Boatright from the list sent me an e-mail suggesting that he and some others take over support – they didn’t want to see the plug-in die… Well I didn’t want to see it die either. So now, I’m doing everything I can to build a team of people who can support the plug-in, without it needing my constant attention.

We’ve now moved the development effort over to the WordPress Plugin Directory, where several new developers are keen to start adding new features. So, look out for exciting enhancement in the near future.

A big thank you to everyone who has contributed or reported bugs. Thank you also to the many many users of Event Calendar, I very much appreciate all your kind support over the years. If you’ve like to show your appreciation, then please go and VOTE FOR US.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about Event Calendar, then please sign up for the mailing list, where there’s a vibrant community of users and developers who are waiting to help you.

The project has now (finally) moved over to the Plugins Directory at wordpress.org, so you can get the latest code from there: event-calendar.zip

If you like Event Calendar, you can now vote for us at the Plugins Directory.

The main change since RC2 is a fix to turn-off broken canonical redirection when both m= & cat= are set. Event Calendar sometimes uses URLs like:

http://wpcal.firetree.net/index.php?m=20071120&cat=1.

Newer versions of WordPress try to rewrite this URL, but get it wrong. The fix turns off the redirection, when it’s not going to work.

Other changes are…

• Fixed ambiguous JavaScript variable name. Thanks to Chris Marshall.
• Fixed unescaped characters in %TITLE% variables. Thanks to Elizabeth M., Peter Troxler and everyone who helped to troubleshoot this problem.
• Replaced calls to deprecated get_settings() with get_option(). Thanks to JD Puglisi for pointing out this issue.
• Macedonian translation. Thanks to Vanco Ordanoski.