FAQ

Q: Why does my calendar link to an archive page rather than directly to the event?

A: The plug-in is behaving as designed. Individual events (in your upcoming list) are linked directly to the post’s permalink. Calendar days are linked to the archive page for that day.

It looks a bit strange if you don’t have any days with more than one event. Imagine that you did have a day with two or three events – where should the calendar’s day-link go then?

It can’t just go to the day’s first event, because then there would be no way to list subsequent events. Instead, it goes to the archive page, where all the day’s events are listed.

Now, you might suggest that it should be “smart” and only go to the archive page on days with more than one event… but then it’s behaving inconsistently! You would be happy (perhaps), but we’d get lots of other people here complaining that sometimes the links go to one place, and sometime another, and they’re unhappy!

It’s a difficult choice. There’s no really perfect solution, but I chose to go with consistency – so the day-links always go to the archive page.

If you can think of a better solution, then please do suggest it.

Q: Why do I get problems when my blog has two addresses? (E.g. www.blog.com or just blog.com)

A: Don’t do this, it breaks WordPress as well as breaking EventCalendar. You should decide whether you want www or not. Then you paste the following lines into your .htaccess file, changing the domain name to match that of your site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\\.domain\\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(Full answer by Rusty Smith.)

Q: Do I still need to hack my WordPress files to get this to work?

A: No. If you previously used v3.0, then you may have hacked in a change to WordPress’ classes.php file. You don’t need the hack any more. Restore your WordPress files to their original state before installing Event Calendar version 3.1.

Q: Can I disable your headers on pages with no calendar?

A: Yes. Remove the filter before your template’s call to wp_head():

<?php remove_filter('wp_head','ec3_action_wp_head'); ?>

Q: Can I supply my own CSS?

A: Yes. To disable the plugin’s CSS, just insert the following code *before* your template’s call to wp_head():

<?php global $ec3; $ec3->nocss=true; ?>

Q: Where are my events? I can see future events in the calendar / event list, but when I click on them, WordPress won’t show them to me.

A: Did you set the ‘Post Timestamp’ instead of using the ‘Event Editor’? If you set the post timestamp into the future, then WordPress thinks you don’t want to show it to people until that date.

Here’s what the Event Editor looks like:

event_editor_2.jpg

Q. I get WordPress database errors

You have an error in your SQL syntax near '( SELECT DISTINCT id, post_title, GREATEST(start,'2006-10-0' at line 1

A. You must have at least MySQL 4 to run the EventCalendar plugin.

Q. I get PHP errors

Warning: putenv(): Safe Mode warning: Cannot set environment variable 'TZ' - it's not in the allowed list

A. Upgrade to at least 3.1._rc4. The timezone feature doesn’t work with PHP4’s safe mode. The latest releases work fine with PHP5, and just grey out the timezone setting if it’s not supported.

Q. Why doesn’t my dynamic calendar work? When I click ‘next’ it just takes me to the next month’s archive.

A. The JavaScript initialization hasn’t run. It’s possible that your theme doesn’t call wp_head() – try switching to the default theme.

It’s more likely that another plug-in is grabbing the window.onload event. Turn off your other plug-ins one at a time until you find the bad one. Then contact that plug-in’s author and ask them to fix the problem. Post your findings to the mailing list too – I’d like to build a list of incompatible plug-ins.

Q. Why doesn’t my dynamic event editor work? Nothing happens when I click the ‘+’ button.

A. Another plug-in is overriding the JavaScript window.onload event, so that EventCalendar cannot initialise. Try turning off your plug-ins until you find the offender. Then report the problem to that plug-in’s authors so they can fix the problem.

Q. How do I set the date or time format?

A. This is nothing to do with EventCalendar. Set the date and time formats on the WordPress General Options screen.

(There are answers to many questions on the Mailing List archive.)

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