Need Developer for Custom Plugin Code

By Jim Gasperini

July 24, 2019, 2:13 pm EDT

Hello--

We currently use Events Manager to create events, and WP FullCalendar to display them in a custom calendar. One longtime unmet need in this set-up is the ability to view events by room in a multi-room facility, in order to see and avoid scheduling conflicts.

I came across a plugin called FullCalendar “Scheduler” which is designed for “displaying resources (things that events can be assigned to, like rooms).”
https://fullcalendar.io/docs/scheduler

I asked on a forum about whether or not this could be set up to use events created in Events Manager, and heard from one of the Events Manager developers as follows:

at the moment this is not yet possible and might need custom coding on your part to make this work

This level of coding is beyond my abilities, so I'm looking for someone who might be able to handle it. Please give an estimate of how much it might cost.

Thanks, Jim

Comments (1)

kevinvess replied:

Hi Jim,

That FullCalendar.io resource you linked to is not a WordPress plugin, but just a JavaScript calendar which would typically be used in some custom application development.

The development required to integrate this JavaScript calendar code with WordPress and the Events Manager plugin would be expensive and likely– not worth the cost.

I recommend you switch from the Events Manager plugin to The Events Calendar plugin instead. With this plugin, you can use their Venue and Organizer fields to list events by "room" (venue).

https://support.theeventscalendar.com/750833-Venue-and-Organizer-pages

It would likely be less expensive to switch to a new WordPress calendar plugin than paying a developer to integrate this other JavaScript library into your existing plugin.

Thanks!

Kevin

JimGasperini replied:

Thanks, Kevin, for the warning about the scope of development required to hook up the Scheduler calendar code.

My heart sinks at the prospect of the days of work that would be required to replace Events Manager/FullCalendar with The Events Calendar. Getting our evens/calendar set up and fully tweaked took a good chunk of the time involved in creating a site with the UUA Theme. Then there would be the chore of moving all the events already in the system over to a new plug-in, retraining the people who use it, creating new FAQs...

I am also unclear about whether we would really be able to do what we need. It is also possible to use Events Manager to list events by "room" (venue). I saw nothing in the default set up in Events Calendar documentation that would give our facilities manager what she really wants: a way to view the various blocks of time associated with particular rooms at the church in a calendar view. The Events Calendar documentation alludes to powerful customization capabilities, but I could see no easy way to get to knowing if what we want is even possible without a deep dive under the hood of their customization tools.

Have you seen an example of a site using Events Calendar that displays an alternative, per room view showing blocks of time that would enable a facilities manager to see potential booking conflicts?

Thanks

kevinvess responded:

Hi Jim,

I see– you need a new custom page/template which will display each day of events by time and room, like that FullCalendar “Scheduler.” You want visually the same thing as that, but you'll need to develop something that will work with the Events Manager plugin.

Does your desired calendar view need to be publicly accessible on the front-end or is this something you only want in the backend/admin panel for your facilities manager?

After looking into the Events Manager plugin, I found this page about their feature to create custom attributes:
https://wp-events-plugin.com/documentation/event-attributes/

You could probably use that to add a "Room" field to your events and then develop a custom template which will display all events for a single date by time and room. You'll also need to develop forward/back buttons and/or a datepicker to switch days to view.

If you're interested in hiring me– send an email to hello@vess.studio with your desired timeline and budget. I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,
Kevin

Heather.Chen wrote:

With the Events Manager, could you use the locations_list shortcode to build a page which displays the upcoming events for each location? It's not as nice as the one you mentioned, but it could be a start.

[locations_list eventful=1 scope="future"]#_LOCATIONLINK #_LOCATIONNEXTEVENTS[/locations_list]

Here's the page on our website which uses this short code:

https://www.uucpa.org/whats-happening/events/locations/

It's fairly simplistic, but there are lots of ways to customize the output using short codes.

JimGasperini replied:

Thanks, Heather. I had been working on getting a locations shortcode to work - it was helpful to have yours as a model. I am waiting to hear how helpful it is to our facilities manager.

One thing I don't understand is the numbers in brackets, such as

< 1 2 3 4 > Labyrinth

in your page. Sometimes they appear above events that recur far into the future, so it serves as a pagination feature. It only seems to work if you select the next number, and then it gets applied to all the locations that have "pagination." Your Labyrinth location does ot however seem to have many instances that would call for pagination, and selecting one of the "pagination" numbers doesn't do much besides change the display of selected number. Oh well.

Heather.Chen replied:

Sorry about that. I didn't have a new line between locations. So the pagination and the next location were on the same line. I have fixed that now.

JimGasperini replied:

Ah. I don't seem to be able to replicate that with a simple . Where do you add lines?

Thanks

Heather.Chen replied:

I inserted a new line after each placeholder using the WYSIWYG editor, which ended up with this:

[locations_list eventful=1 scope="future"]#_LOCATIONLINK #_LOCATIONNEXTEVENTS [/locations_list]