PRO: Using Custom Recurring Events
Wondering how to get the perfect combination of attributes to avoid having to enter an event more than once? Let our support maestro Rob walk you through how to use the custom recurring events feature for the WordPress Events Calendar PRO plugin.
Custom recurring events allow for event creators to make more complex recurrence patterns than the standard Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly options do.
On the event creation page, find the “Events Calendar” section and head to the Recurrence dropdown. Skip over all the options until you reach the last one in the list: Custom.
You’ll first need to specify whether the event ends on a certain date or after a fixed number of occurrences. Then set the frequency.
- Daily: Set your event to occur every X days.
- Weekly: Set your event to occur every X weeks, on the days (selected via checkbox) of your choosing.
- Monthly: Set your event to occur every X months, on days filtered by two specific dropdowns of criteria.
- Yearly: Set your event to occur every X years, on months of your choosing AND days filtered by two specific dropdowns of criteria.
Custom recurrence doesn’t allow for everything, but should accommodate for most of the recurring events one would want to configure. If there’s something you’re looking to do but can’t see how given the information presented above, let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we do to help.
I’d like to have a recurring event that isn’t as regularly scheduled as what you have above. For example, the same event occurs on Monday at 2:30pm and on Thursday at 4pm and again on Saturday at 11am. Is that possible, or do they have to be three separate events?
Hey Lynne. At this point, recurring events are limited to the patterns you see when creating a new event; which means that the “Custom” offerings are the most complex we can go with the 2.0 release. In 2.1 we should be changing this to allow for more random recurrences…as that has been one of the most requested features since 2.0 launched. Stay tuned for that functionality!
Is there a way to select individual days for the event to occur on?
Say, check a ‘multiple day’ option and use a calendar picker to select any number of specific days?
Otherwise it seems irregularly scheduled events are impossible.
Michael: thanks for reaching out. At this point, irregularly scheduled events are limited to what can be done with the “Custom” recurrence options. Though as I mentioned to Lynne above…this will likely be changing soon based on the feedback we’ve received from the community so far.
Is Events Calendar Pro capable of scheduling an event that occurs on the 4 and 5th Sunday of a month (when there are five Sundays)? If not, how do I manually schedule an event without having to create an new event page?
Hey Matt. That’s an interesting request; at this point it looks like you’d need to use the “Last Sunday” of the month option and create a separate event for the “4th Sunday.” I realize that’s a bit of a hassle but as I mentioned to the two folks above, we have had these random recurrence patterns as one of the most requested features since launching 2.0 and are looking to enhance that to meet everybody’s needs for the next substantive (2.1) release. Sorry I couldn’t offer up more in the interim.
Hi,
are there any news on custom recurring events ? I have a client who holds seminars which consist of 2-3 different dates and it would be great to cover this with the EventsCalendar.
Hey Achim. Thanks for reaching out; at this point the plugin’s custom recurrence options are limited to these ones included here in the screencast above. We are still looking into making those more flexible so users can make recurrence patterns that are even more custom/random than these, but the results of that probably won’t be released until during the 2.1 lifecycle later this year.
Hope that helps and sorry I couldn’t offer up more in the short-term. Let me know what else I can do or if you have other questions.
Hi, Rob,
I’m very happy with PRO’s ability to schedule my calendar’s many recurring events, but every once in a while, for example, on a holiday, these events don’t meet. Is there a way to cancel the meeting for that day only without trashing the remaining recurrences?
Thanks!
Hi there Judith – thanks for the note here. Glad to hear that you’re enjoying PRO’s functionality so far. The easiest way to do this would be to just edit the entry for whatever event was scheduled for a holiday; make some change to that event’s details (even if it’s just “unpublishing”); and when prompted, make sure to select “Only this event” (rather than “all future events”). Doing so will break that event out from the broader recurrence pattern but shouldn’t impact those already scheduled.
Hope that helps. If not, it’d be awesome if you could post a thread on the forum (http://tri.be/support/forums) so we could take a look and try to advise from there. Cheers!