Finding Your Events & Adding Them To The Menu
We’ve been getting a lot of feedback the past few weeks from users with the question: I understand how to add my events on the backend, but where exactly do I find the calendar where they appear on the frontend? In retrospect this no surprise…to users of the open source community, our switch from treating events as regular posts to an events custom post type is a major change. (1.3.3 PRO users were already aware of this since the switch was previously made in the 1.x code base).
To help, I put together a quick screencast a minute ago answering that question, as well as another that has come up more than we’d expected: how do events get added to the header menu?
Finding your calendar on the frontend
By default, your events will live at /events on your site. However, to verify this or change that location, just do the following:
- On the backend of your site, go to Settings –> The Events Calendar.
- Find the section for “Events URL Slug.” It will have a field (likely populated with “events”), and a link that shows your current events URL. You’ll notice that URL is just your site’s URL, followed by the word you see in the slug field above.
- Clicking that link will take you to your frontend events listing. If you change the word “events” to something else (say, “calendar”), when you save your changes the link below will be updated to reflect this as well. At that time when you click the link, it’ll take you to /calendar on the frontend — which will be your new calendar URL.
Note that you’ll follow this same method whether you’re using The Events Calendar 2.0 or Events Calendar PRO 2.0 — the slug’s behavior and functionality is identical between the two.
Adding events to your menu
Adding events to the header menu is another process that doesn’t change regardless of whether you’re using The Events Calendar or Events Calendar PRO. Follow these steps:
- On your site’s backend, navigate to Appearance –> Menus.
- In the middle column, scroll down until you see an option for “Events.” You’ll notice that underneath it are other event-related metaboxes: Venues, Organizers, and Event Categories. You can add any of the above to your menus by just clicking the checkbox next to them and hitting “Add to Menu.” They’ll as a result appear in the list of menu items in the right-hand column.
- Notice that if you go into the Events section on this page and toggle from “Most Recent” to “View All,” you’ll see the first item in the list is “Events.” Adding this will add the entire events calendar (at /events, by default) to the header menu. Every other item in that list is an individual event listing — only this first “Events” item is the broader category. Keep that in mind as you go about your additions.
- Upon saving the menu changes and navigating to the frontend, you should see the events-related links in the menu that you added them to. You’ll notice that if you click into an individual event, the menu item is “highlighted” (bold) to be consistent with the way WordPress’ menus handle other post types.
If there are any other lingering questions you still have about plugin basics, do let us know so we can put together some appropriate documentation to guide you towards the light.
I am a WP/php noob who has been trying to configure the Events Calendar (Pro) plugin for the past few days. Looking at this video, my pages look different.
1. There are no Events URL or slug fields in the plug in settings page.
2. Events are not showing up in Appearance/Menus
Any ideas my this might be?
Thanks.
Hey Paul. I didn’t do any customization to the plugin here, so you should be seeing the same thing. You’re an admin on the site, right? This was done from the perspective of an administrator.
Hi Rob,
I am having the same issue.
“There are no Events URL or slug fields in the plug in settings page.”
it goes from enable google maps to debug… and I am the admin. it’s just me:)
Hi Ryan. I’m not sure what would be causing this; in our testing we never experienced this issue, so I’ll likely need a bit more information from you on this. What version of Events Calendar/PRO/WordPress are you running? You should be on 2.0.1/2.0.1/1.3.2. Let me know if that’s not the case.
Also, what theme are you using? Does the issue persist if you revert to the 2011 theme, with no other plugins active? Would be good to know if we could identify whether this is a plugin/theme conflict.
Hey Rob,
I’m running 2.0.1/2.0.1/1.3.2
here’s a screen shot of my events page: http://www.rockofkc.com/images/screen.png
our theme is Cold Theme 1.8 by e404 Themes
also when I have a recurring event. If I click them…it goes to a blank template page. But if the event just has one occurrence it will show up fine….when you click it – it goes to the event.
Hey Ryan. Any chance this has been resolved with the 2.0.3 upgrades (for both Events & PRO)? If not, would you mind posting over at the PRO forums so I can get a dev to chime in?
Hi Paul, I’m having the same problem with one of my websites. I’m using the latest upgrade of The Events Calendar, the Twenty Ten Theme and the latest WordPress 3.3.1. I disactivated all plugins to check if any interferences between Events calendar and other plugins: no luck : the Events URL slug and Single Events URL slug fields DO NOT show in Settings.
I installed the latest version of your plugin on my “testing”-site which runs under WordPress 3.3 (not 3.3.1) and using Twenty Ten as well, and with this config I have no PB : the Events URL slug and Single Events URL slug field show in Settings.
Any clue?
Sorry, I hadn’t seen the “permalink”-topic further down on this page… Switched to “nice” URLS and everything OK !
This looks like a fantastic plugin and thanks for the great tutorials.
I get my theme’s 404 error page when I try to load the events page (clicking the link that shows the current events url in my settings page).
I’d love to see if I can get this working, as I’ll be upgrading to the paid version for a popular international cycling site, but this is kind of a roadblock!
Hey Frank, thanks for the words. Happy to do what I can to help here. Have you tried just saving your permalinks page (not making any changes to it, just saving) and trying again? We’ve found that can sometimes fix this issue.
If not, let me know whether the issue occurs in the 2011 theme as well, and whether you’ve got any other plugins active that could be conflicting.
Hi- How can I set it up so that the calendar is on my home page? I can get it to work fine and I love the layout (btw any way to have events repeat yearly) displays so nicely but I need it on the home page on my running site!
Thanks,
Don
Hey Don. By default the calendar is going to live at /events; if you want it on your home page, the best bet would be to either use one of the widgets that is available right out of the box, or give template tags a shot. The latter is detailed right here: http://tri.be/support/documentation/.
That give you what you need?
Hi, this is a fantastic plug-in, however I’m experiencing similar issues. Using the MyURL.com/events threw a 404 error.
I also have no slug option in my Free Version (running IE 9 on Windows 7 Enterprise) so I can’t change the default page. Same thing running Firefox 8 on Windows XP.
I followed your tutorial to add the calendar to the menu, and that allowed my to access the calendar on the frontend, and it’s working fine. But the URL for the page is MyURL.com/?post_type=tribe_events
Thanks for such simple and straightforward tutorials, and for transcribing some of them because it’s sometimes easier to watch, and sometimes easier to scan and read.
Thanks in advance for your help.
I also noticed it defaults to the list view despite my having set the calendar view as the default.
But was able to workaround this by changing the URL in the menu item using the calendar view URL
I haven’t found a workaround for not having the slug option in the Dashboard, or the issue with the calendar defaulting to the list view despite being set to Calendar view in the dashboard; but by changing the permalinks to a Custom structure /%postname% then using the MyURL.com/events at least works.
I know I’ve seen a reference to the permalinks switch somewhere on this site, but I haven’t been able to find it again.
My guess is the “slug” is not appearing because you’re not using pretty permalinks (ie /%postname%/); if you turn those on, you should be set. Let me know if not.
Thanks for the words, otherwise! If you’re still having issues after trying this just give me a shout and I’d be happy to assist.
I’m having difficulties implementing the calendar in my website as well. I’m experiencing the same problems Paul (1st post) has.
Both the Events URL slug and Single Event URL slug input fields are missing in my settings page. When I go to /events, nothing can be found there. I was able to create an event in the admin pages, however. My account is the admin account.
More info on the site:
WP: 3.1.2
Event Calendar: 2.0.1
Theme: Sonar 1.2.7
Does any of you have an idea what might go wrong here?
Thanks in advance!
Hey Bart. Have you tried enabling pretty permalinks (ie /%postname%/ or something along those lines) and seeing if the ‘slug’ fields return to your Events Calendar settings page? They should; let me know if not.
This doesn’t work for me in the free version. There is no event box in the menu area to add it to the menu, and no box to change the link. MyURL.com/?post_type=tribe_events does show up.
Regina, you should make sure you’re using a pretty permalink structure and not one the default one WordPress assigns. Enable something like /%postname%/ and it should cause the fields to appear on the Settings –> The Events Calendar page. Can you give that a shot and let me know if the issues persist from there?
Rob, “The Events Calendar” Slug entry fields did not appear until I changed the Permalinks selection from “Default” e.g., http://localhost/wordpress/?p=123 to “Post Name” e.g., http://localhost/wordpress/sample-post/ Additionally, I had to create the Events Page and Menu item to see the calendar display. I am very interested to try the features, looks good.
I am hoping to use the calendar on a non-profit sports organization site. Would like each team to see and maintain their own calendar on the teams respective page, but also display all events, for all teams on the sites home page. Teams are based on age group and coach. Additionally, would be nice to be able to distinguish events by game, tournament, practice, training.
Hey John: what kind of non-profit are you working with? We’ve been setting up partnerships with certain non-profits the past few months, hooking them up with a license key in exchange for a link/logo promoting us. If you’re interested shoot a note to PRO /a/ tri.be.
My calendar is appearing at the bottom of the webpage instead of appearing right under the month option.
Hey Bean – not sure I understand the issue here. Any chance you can elaborate and/or share a link? Feel free to email me (rob at tri.be) if you want to as well, might make more sense so as not to distract the rest of the conversation here.
There is no such option ‘Events URL Slug’ option.
It also defaults to the events list view, even when calendar view specified.
I can see other people have had these issues and posted here, but no response from you guys?
Also, is it possible to add multiple calendars to the same site? So, for example on different pages – one for London, one for Edinburgh etc – it is crucial for me as these are public events best separated by local area. I would rather do it this way than just entering the places as events categories because I can’t work out how to make it only show certain categories on the calendar so I doubt my users would bother!
Thanks v much, apart from these issues (fundamental ones unfortunately) the plugin is great.
Hey Alex – we’re keeping most of our responses to the forums here at tri.be; the comments section is more for comments than for support, so we don’t check this daily like we do the forums.
As I suggested to the other users above…you can bring the slug fields back to the Settings page by turning on a pretty permalink structure.
Not sure what’s up with the events defaulting to list view, even when calendar is specified…can you post a link to your site so I can check that out directly, or better yet email me (rob at tri.be)?
Unfortunately, on the multiple calendar side, the best approach at this time is categorization. If it helps, we did put together a walkthrough on how to color code the categories in a way that might make them more distinct. That’s right here: http://tri.be/coloring-your-category-events/. While this may change down the road, categories are definitely your best bet at this point.
How can i add the events calendar to a page?
My templa#te does not allow for custom menus to display in the nav bar as the nav bar is created from the pages on my site.
i would like to be able to create a page with and include the events calendar with in the page…. is this possible?? something like [events]
Hi Bob. Thanks for the note. As it stands now, the plugin doesn’t allow for shortcodes (something like [events], for example)…but you should be able to accomplish what you’re going for by using template tags. Have you checked out our documentation on those, here (http://tri.be/support/documentation/) ? Let me know if you’ve still got questions from there.
My site is not live yet (we have one existing while in development, GoDaddy had me do some switcharoo so I can see my WP site and admin on my computer without it going live). Anyway, I followed your instructions as I read other comments and switched to the “pretty permalinks” which solved my “slug” issue (although Im not really sure how that will help me, it just bugged me that I could not see the same stuff you could). I was REALLY hoping I could get the actual calendar to show up on my events page instead of the list view, even though it was selected as the default view for events. Yes, I re-did my header menu the way you described through the appearence/menu/create new menu feature. I know others have had the same (?) issue but maybe there is new insight or my description has shown light on something unusual that could be causing this. Any ideas? I will probably go live with the site in the next week or so so I could re-connect then if Im still having the issue. BTW, in case you can’t tell, Im a WP newbie and hack “webmaster”. Thanks for the help! The WordPress community seems to be pretty awesome!
WP 3.3.1, MySQL v5.5.8, PHP v5.2.6
Open Source activated
Permalinks set to “Post name”
URL slug does appear
Going to Appearance>Menu and everything is greyed out. Both with the custom theme (designed with Artisteer) and using the Twenty-Ten default theme. Unable to add Events to the Menu
Okay — I DO have a slug area in the settings. And I set it to Events/Event. But the calendar doesn’t work on the events page, I get the apache error page. The one event I’ve made does work.
So, reading the above, I changed my permalinks to pretty, went in and deleted the old page I’d created for events, thinking to remake it. When I did that, of course I couldn’t make another — I had to make a page titled events-2. When I did that, and curious, set the slug to events-2 — it all worked – the calender worked on events-2. So I thought the permalinks had fixed it. SO I went into my PHPadmin, and deleted all the old events pages so I could recreate the events page titled once again as events, changed the slug back to events — and now it doesn’t work again. *hits head over and over again* Some one please help. I can’t wait to get started using this program, but what am I doing wrong?
Hi Rebecca, please post the issue in our forum and we will address it there.
Thanks,
Jonah
hello Rob,
i would like to ask if there is a way to put a small icon (at least 3 different) instead of text inside the calendar to define 3 different events every month.
Thanks,
Vasso
Hey Vasso. Interesting idea; thanks for the note on it. This may be doable but I’d need to bring a dev in to take a look. Would you mind posting it on the PRO forums at tri.be/support/forums, and we can try to point you in the right direction from there? Thanks!
Hi
When I view my events page, the page title is set as ‘Untitled’ – is there any way to customise this?
Thanks
Hi Rob!
The video with the showing how to add events from the appearance tab was really helpful. My calendar is finally showing up on the front end but it has a web address from my admin word press site at the top. Do you have any idea why its there or how I can remove it?
http://www.crcbaltimorecounty.org/events-calendar
Hey, I saw this question was asked before, but I didn’t get much out of the answer. I’m building a custom theme for a client. The calendar needs to appear on the front page. You’re saying the best bet to set this up this way it by using a template system? I’m new to wordpress.
Hey Kaitie. Well, the calendar will by default appear at /events on your site. So if the client is fine having a calendar-specific page like that, you should be set off the bat. But if they wanted to display specific event data on the main page or elsewhere…yes, that’s going to require use of template tags. I would start at our themer’s guide, which covers this in more broad terms (http://tri.be/themers-guide-to-the-events-calendar/)…and then check out the template tag-specific documentation right here: tri.be/support/documentation.
Hope that helps. If you have other questions or need anything else, let us know.
Hi Rob,
Just a quick question here: I already added the Events Calendar to our website menu, still, despite the default view set for Events is the calendar layout (which we actually want), when the page is accessed, it always displays the event list instead. Any suggestions on changing that? we already tried to change that within plugin Settings but no luck so far. We are using Wordpres 3.4 and a Restaurant Theme from another vendor.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Marius,
Thanks for your note. We’d be happy to try and help you out. But would you mind posting it on the PRO forums (http://tri.be/support/forums) first? That would give me a link to share with our devs if they need to get involved (rather than handling through blog comments, which is always a messy process). Plus it’d allow others to benefit from the exchange should they have a similar question. We hit the forums a few times a day so if you post it this afternoon we’ll take a look from there.
If you post it there, it’ll ensure we get you a response here in as timely a fashion as possible. Thanks for understanding and my apologies again for the inconvenience.
If you do not have a PRO license, you’ll need to post your issue to the open source forum here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/ – we hit that forum about once a week as we can, since our core effort is on the PRO forums. If you’d need faster service you will need to purchase a license. Thanks again!